Not making sense on naval vessels, Kamla

THE EDITOR: Open letter to Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

You are not making sense. The OPVs ordered under the Patrick Manning administration and subsequently cancelled by your administration were naval vessels designed for specific national security purposes. Those three vessels – now with the Brazilian navy – had radar/sonar electronics, warfare armaments and interceptors, and onboard helipads.

Those Damen Stan vessels you mentioned in a May 31 newspaper article, titled “No need for new coast guard boat,” are not true naval vessels – and that’s just for starters.Your own national security adviser and former national security minister, Gary Griffith, admitted later that cancelling those OPVs was a big mistake.

The Dutch boats cannot stay 30-35 days at sea, have no electronics, militarily grade sonar/radar, no helipad and don’t carry fast interceptors on board – and no armaments. They have a way shorter range – 2,000-4,000 km as against the 10,000 km of the OPVs. The OPV crews 80 as compared to 17-20 for the Dutch boats.

On the national security issues, stealth is a precious weapon in dealing with illegal activities. When an OPV is out at sea the bad guys don’t know where our naval personnel are, thus there’s a greater chance of stopping and ceasing illegal items before they have landed here.

The electronics on board the OPVs would be able to “see” day and night. The chopper can be launched at sea and follow suspicious vessels from the air and communicate with its base interceptors, again ensuring a greater chance of intercepting contraband.

The Damen Stan vessel doesn’t have those capabilities and will cost an arm and a leg to have them installed, if at all possible.

The OPVs would have been of much great assistance for search and rescue emergencies in natural disasters. When Dominica needed assistance after the hurricane you could have placed six-eight 20-foot shipping containers with supplies – food, water, medicals, emergency materials etc – as well as additional personnel (military and civilian) on board the OPVs’ decks (they have their own cranes) instead of using a helicopter to carry six-eight large garbage bags of supplies, about four-five kilogrammes at best. Not so the with the Damen Stans.

Madam, you did not care about our security nor sovereignty back then and by making these nonsensical statements now you are being a stranger to the truth. We needed those vessels back then and need at least two of them immediately.

A horrible decision was made by an administration you led in cancelling those OPVs. The Brazilians benefitted and are benefitting. We lost and are still losing lives daily. How many guns would not have been able to enter TT had you not cancelled those three OPVs? How many lives could have been saved from gun-related violence?

A word to the wise, Madam Opposition Leader: silence is golden.

T CLAY SUCE
, Talparo