What Do Offshore Patrol Vessels Have In Common? Not Much

摘要

What's an Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV)? It's a simple, compact patrol craft, right? But delegates at a recent OPV conference, hosted by IQPC in Rotterdam, came to the conclusion that there is no simple answer, and no single OPV that meets everyone's needs. More than 150 delegates from around the world attended the 2-day conference, which was followed by a tour of Damen's Royal Schelde Shipyards. Nations use patrol vessels for a variety of purposes, including fisheries protection; antidrug surveillance and interdiction; humanitarian assistance; firefighting, towing, and salvage; search and rescue; immigration control; and pollution control and environmental protection. No one vessel is optimized for all of those missions. J. J. Hoppman, professor of ship design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands said many factors must be considered in OPV design. Is a ship needed for the open sea or the littoral? Is the threat violent or benign? Are targets large or small, fast or stationary, close or near, few or many?