To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

There's a term for peo­ple who buy the newest tech­nolo­gies, ea­ger to en­joy the ben­e­fits and some­times night­mares of work­ing with new so­lu­tions to old prob­lems. Who would have thought that Trinidad and To­ba­go would have turned out to be an ear­ly adopter of ma­rine tech­nol­o­gy, plac­ing an or­der with BAE Sys­tems for the de­sign, con­struc­tion and de­liv­ery of three 90 me­tre Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels (OPV). They are al­so pro­vid­ing train­ing and a five year, in-ser­vice sup­port pack­age to this coun­try for 150 mil­lion pounds. The UK Min­istry of De­fence was re­port­ed to be pro­vid­ing ad­vice to the Gov­ern­ment and op­er­a­tional sea train­ing to the Coast Guard crews ex­pect­ed to man the ships. The three ves­sels mea­sure 90.5 me­tres long with breadth mould­ed at 13.5 me­tres and a draught of 3.5 me­tres. They have a top speed in ex­cess of 25 knots and a pa­trol range at 12 knots greater than 5,500nm. A ful­ly armed crew of 50 can func­tion aboard for 35 days con­tin­u­ous­ly.

The large in­ter­dic­tion ves­sels ap­pear to be mod­elled on a de­sign which BAE has used to cre­ate a sim­i­lar ship for Oman, and the first two were named the Port-of-Spain and the Scar­bor­ough in mid-No­vem­ber. The third ship is still be­ing com­plet­ed for de­liv­ery at the end of 2010 and will be dubbed the San Fer­nan­do. The Port-of-Spain was con­struct­ed at BAE's Portsmouth ship­yards while the oth­er two are be­ing built at Scot­stoun on the Clyde. The ini­tial con­tract for the ships was signed with VT Ship­build­ing, but BAE Sys­tems took full own­er­ship of the sub­sidiary and re­named it BAE Sys­tems Sur­face Ships Ltd. The Coast Guards­men as­signed to the ves­sels for train­ing com­plained to the Guardian on Sat­ur­day that they were "strand­ed" in the UK and that is­sues with the de­sign of the ves­sels had pro­longed their stay while pay­ment of salaries had been spo­radic.

Ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, these of­fi­cers have trav­elled be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions since they took up their as­sign­ments in Eng­land in 2008. There re­mains, how­ev­er, the need for deep­er clar­i­fi­ca­tion in this mat­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the ac­cu­sa­tion by Cap­tain Gary Grif­fith, Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter, that the ves­sels were de­signed and con­struct­ed from the ground up to meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, cre­at­ing ships that he de­scribed as be­ing "first of class." In light of the poor per­for­mance of Nid­co in eval­u­at­ing the HSV Su, some ques­tion­ing of the qual­i­ty of eval­u­a­tion and de­ci­sion mak­ing that went in­to the se­lec­tion of BAE Sys­tems for the con­struc­tion of these ves­sels and the de­lays as­so­ci­at­ed with their de­liv­ery is cer­tain­ly in or­der.

It re­mains un­clear why the first ves­sel pro­duced un­der the con­tract, TTS PoS (CG50) has not been de­ployed for use in Trinidad and To­ba­go to meet its de­liv­ery date. Cap­tain Kir­ton Hug­gins of the Strate­gic Project Man­age­ment Of­fice not­ed that de­liv­ery was ex­pect­ed in Feb­ru­ary but could of­fer no ex­pla­na­tion of the rea­sons for the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the de­liv­ery sched­ule. Ac­cord­ing to re­leas­es on the BAE Sys­tems web­site, the ves­sel has been ex­ten­sive­ly test­ed and has un­der­gone ex­ten­sive sea test­ing pend­ing its re­lease to Trinidad and To­ba­go's Coast Guard. In ad­di­tion to of­fer­ing more com­pre­hen­sive in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of this ex­pen­sive project now con­trac­tu­al­ly over­due on the first stages of their de­liv­ery sched­ule, the gov­ern­ment must al­so be pre­pared to out­line a strat­e­gy for their use that meets the ex­pec­ta­tions of the pub­lic for in­creased safe­ty.

At the time of their com­mis­sion­ing, the ships were ex­pect­ed to pa­trol the Trinidad and To­ba­go coast­line as well as par­tic­i­pate in re­gion­al pa­trols aimed at what was de­scribed as Eco­nom­ic Ex­clu­sion Zone man­age­ment, en­forc­ing mar­itime law in the re­gion. Trans­paren­cy in this sit­u­a­tion, which has un­set­tled Coast Guard of­fi­cers serv­ing in this mat­ter since 2008 and will, ul­ti­mate­ly cost Trinidad and To­ba­go a hand­some sum, would go a long way to­ward calm­ing the tur­bu­lence sur­round­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of these long-await­ed, high-pow­ered an­ti-crime seacraft.