SAFE Boats to provide weapons for Ukraine’s Island-class patrol boats

SAFE Boats will acquire weapons for the Island-class patrol boats of the Ukrainian Navy.

The U.S. Department of Defense signed an additional contract with SAFE Boats International for the purchase and fit out of weapons on Island-class patrol boats of the Ukrainian Navy.

Under this contract, six Gun Weapon Systems are to be purchased and installed.

The value of the signed contract, which is the option to the main agreement, amounted to $22.27 million.

The agreement also provides for the supply of spare parts. The work will be carried out at a facility in Washington State and will be completed by October 2024.

Back in 2016, the Ukrainian authorities sent a request to the United States to transfer to the country’s Navy two Island-class patrol boats from the U.S. Coast Guard as part of the Surplus Military Property program.

On September 27, 2018, in Baltimore, in the presence of the President of Ukraine, an official ceremony was held to transfer WPB-1321 and WPB-1323 boats to Ukraine, which received the new names: Р190 Sloviansk and Р191 Starobilsk.

In October 2019, the boats were delivered to Odesa and adopted on November 14. The transferred boats were already equipped with weapons.

In the same year, in 2019, Ukraine sent a request to the United States to transfer three more boats. The transfer of three boats — WPB-1307, WPB-1331 and WPB-1336 — was approved.

The first two boats, called Sumy and Fastiv, were delivered to Ukraine in November 2021; they became part of the fleet in December 2021.

The delivery of a third Р194 boat called Vyacheslav Kubrak was planned for early 2022, but the process was probably disrupted due to the beginning of a full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine.

Recall that in 2022, the Russian military attacked the Ukrainian Island-class Slavyansk patrol boat. During the battle, the boat received combat damage and sank.