2 PH Navy ships to be decommissioned
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2020 08:30:37 +0000
TWO ships of the Philippine Navy will be decommissioned on Wednesday and their personnel to undergo training in handling new assets.
The BRP Rizal (PS-74), a patrol corvette, and BRP Nicolas Mahusay (PC-119), a patrol killer medium gunboat, have “outlived their usefulness.”
They will be decommissioned from their service to the Navy on at the Capt. Salvo Pier, Naval Base Heracleo Alano in Sangley Point, Cavite City.
Vice Admiral Robert Empedrad, Navy chief, said the decommissioning of the ships would pave the way for the arrival of the South Korean-made missile-armed frigates BRP Jose Rizal and BRP Antonio Luna, in May and September respectively.
The new ships are capable of anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare.
Empedrad said the Navy was also hopeful in acquiring an additional Pohang-class corvette from Seoul.
Rear Admiral Giovanni Bacordo, commander of the Philippine Fleet, reiterated the phasing out of the legacy vessels was part of modernization.
“If you modernize, you have to remove from [the] inventory already all the legacy [ships] because how can you change the systems? How can you change the mindset of our personnel if they are seeing on one side old ships and on the other, new set of ships? So, all [ships with] old systems have to be removed from our inventory,” Bacordo told reporters.
“These ships already outlived their usefulness. It could no longer perform the missions that it is designed to perform,” he said.
For instance, the BRP Nicolas Mahusay used to run from 25 to 30 knots but was now down to only 14 knots.
Bacordo said the next ships to be decommissioned were expected within the first semester of the year as they “already planned out every quarter. We will be decommissioning every quarter.”
The BRP Rizal was acquired by the Philippines from the United States in 1965 and served for 54 years while the BRP Nicolas Mahusay came from South Korea in 1998 and served for 22 years. DEMPSEY REYES