Enters Another Guardian Of The South China Sea

I am happy that after waiting for so long, KD Perak was finally commissioned today. As an old friend remarked in the comments section of a previous post, the date was last delayed because the vessels was only handed over three days after the targeted date even though she was accepted by the Navy five days earlier. Nonetheless the time was well spent to spruce up the ship and get her shipshape as can be seen from the fine photograph above courtesy of Standupper from MPSA forum.

KD Perak denotes a significant milestone for the Patrol Vessel by being the first fully constructed locally by Boustead Naval Shipyard. Despite the long delay from her launching date of 12 November, 2007 until her commissioning today, this was not as long as the initial two vessels built overseas but completed locally demonstrating the shipyard has managed to improve their delivery process although this can be further improved. As it is, the seemingly impregnable wall around the delivery status of the next patrol vessel number 174 PV Terengganu hopefully does not hide major problems to finish her. Instead it is hoped that progress on the vessel instead has been accelerated and her own commissioning will soon be announced to alleviate the Navy's shortage of surface units.

It was announced that the KD Perak will be home ported in Tanjung Gelang Naval Base in Kuantan to undertake patrol in the South China Sea, part of the new Navy strategy to position two units of patrol vessels under each of the Command Naval Region (MAWILLA) from this initial batch of patrol vessel. Thus she will join her predecessors in becoming a guardian of Malaysian national interest in the South China Sea. The timely completion of all the vessels in this first batch should allow the building of the second batch to proceed, hopefully upgraded to either an Anti Submarine Warfare or Anti Air Warfare platform according to the more pressing requirement. This is in the event that the first batch will maintained as pure gunboats if monies cannot be found to upgrade the vessels to either platform eventually.

Edited 5 May 2009 : Utusan Malaysia today reported that the CNO Datuk Seri Abdul Aziz Jaafar expressed his hope to receive further surface assest to fill the critical shortage of surface assets at all the Navy's MAWILLA's during the commissioning ceremony. He hoped that three other patrol vessels by Boustead Naval Shipyard can commissioned as soon as possible. He announced that PV4 (Terengganu) will be commissioned on October 2009 while the sixth patrol vessel will be launched at the end of July 2009.