BRP Datu Marikudo PS 23 (photo : Timawa)Vintage Navy ships taken off the shelf
The Navy yesterday decommissioned three vintage ships.
It is coordinating with the donors of the two patrol ships and a patrol gunboat prior to selling these as scrap metal.
Parts of these vessels have already been removed and used for other Navy ships.
"If we needed spares, we just goet them from these (now decommissioned ships)," said Capt. Giovanni Carlo Bacordo, Navy spokesman.
"They are beyond economic repair. It will entail a lot of cost if they are going to be revived so we preferred to remove them from the inventory of the Philippine Navy," said Bacordo.
Bacordo also said the decommissioning of the ships would not have effect on the Navy’s operational capability because these have not been used for a long while, remaining idle at Sangley Point in Cavite City, home of the Philippine Fleet.
He said the two patrol ships, PS 29 or BRP Negros Occidental and PS 23 or BRP Datu Marikudo, were donated by the US after the World War II and are 67 years old.
The gunboat (PG 844 or BRP Jose Artiaga) saw action with the Philippine Navy in 1993 after their donation by South Korea. It is about 30 years old.
With the decommissioning of the three ships, the Navy is left with 99 patrol, transport, and auxiliary ships and small craft, many of them also ageing. Of the number, 54 are operational, the Navy said.
(Malaya)
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