The US Department of Defense has released some detailed information on this package. The previously announced 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats will be of three kinds.
These are:
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- ten 34-foot Dauntless SeaArk patrol boats
- two 35-foot small-unit riverine crafts; and
- six 40-foot maritime combat crafts.
"These are largely to protect the riverways and to enable Ukraine to maintain its control of the riverways. They can also be used in <...> close-in coastal areas," said a senior defense official during a Friday briefing at the Pentagon.
The Drive assumes the non-specified 40-foot combat crafts are the Riverine Patrol Boats, exactly six units of which were purchased by the Naval Sea Systems Command in 2020, according to the Sea Power Magazine.
As Defense Express reported, Ukrainian Armed Forces are planning to deploy a riverine fleet on the Dnipro River to provide support in operational areas close to rivers which are numerous given the geographic peculiarities of northern Ukraine.
The fleet will be created based on the same principle as the so-called Brown-water Navy in the West. For instance, such units are part of the Maritime Expeditionary Security Forces in the US. They usually use small high-speed boats with large-caliber machine guns for their tasks.
At the same time, the Dnipro military fleet is not fully an innovation either. It actually existed with significant breaks from the XVIII century, for the last time it participated in combat operations during World War II. At that time, the fleet provided river forcing, landing operations and transportation of goods.
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