Ukraine, France discussing delivery of OCEA FPB 98 patrol boats

Ukraine is currently negotiating with France for the joint production of 20 FPB 98 patrol boats designed by the OCEA shipyard, the Ukrainian government officially stated on June 29.

Nathan Gain 01 Jul 2019

« The Sea Guard of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine will receive 20 French patrol boats OCEA FPB 98!, » the Ukrainian government said on Facebook on Saturday morning.

According to the Ukrainian government, this potential purchase includes « negotiations on deployment of their joint production ».

OCEA’ FPB 98 is 32 meters long and features an effective range of 1,200 Nm at the speed of 12 knots. Its wide range of missions includes territorial and deep sea surveillance operations, smuggling and illegal immigration control, SAR, or natural resources and blue economy protection.

The French shipyard has sold a number of FPB 98 ships around the world, including to Benin, Suriname and Nigeria. Algeria recently started taking delivery of an additional batch of 10 boats after having received 21 FPB 98 vessels between 2008 and 2012.

Authors

Posted by : Nathan Gain

Nathan is based in Namur, Belgium. He holds an MA in modern history with a minor in international relations from the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL – Belgium). Fascinated by military history he naturally turned to the defense sector after graduating and is particularly interested in Northern European and Belgian defense issues as well as in anything related to naval aviation.