TCSG Güven Commissioned
22 Nov 2013 1 Comment
TCSG Dost, sister ship of TCSG Güven seen here during one of the builders trials.
The third off shore patrol vessel for the Turkish Coast Guard, SG-702 TCSG Güven was delivered today to the end user.
The design of the these ships are based on the Sirio class vessels produced by Italian Fincantieri. With the commissioning of these ships Coast Guard will be able to perform its duties mainly search and rescue in sea state 5 and higher.
The contract for the construction of 4 ships at RMK Marine Shipyard was signed on 16 January 2007. The keel of the first ship TCSG Dost was laid on 3 May 2008. She was launched on 9 June 2010 and was supposed to enter service last year.
These are the first large ships of the Turkish Coast Guard which never used any boat with a large displacement than 200 tons. Their primary task will be search and rescue missions on heavy seas and in bad weather when the smaller boats cannot operate. Secondary missions will be showing the flag, patrolling the seas and prevention of smuggling.
The first two ships SG-701 TCSG Dost and SG-703 TCSG Umut were commissioned in May 2013. The forth ship SG-704 TCSG Yaşam is scheduled to be commissioned in January 2015.
This ceremony was also a good opportunity for RMK Marine to polish its reputation and maybe to mend its tainted relations with the government.
turkishnavy.net 
These boats unfortunately are a waste of resources for Turkey. Turkish CG needs flexible enforcement, S&R approach with helicopters and medium endurance S&R craft. Command and response are centered on enforcement not on rendering public assisstance. The redundancy of agencies for enforcement, S&R assets, customs enforcement plus high endurance craft makes a total chaos environment in which effective and efficient response is far from obtaining required cohesive action.