Japan is building the world’s largest coast guard ship, surpassing China’s CCG 5901
The Japan Coast Guard said it will begin constructing the largest multi-purpose patrol ship in 2025. The ship will be as long as two football fields and respond to emergencies and disasters.
The 30,000-ton behemoth dwarfs the China Coast Guard’s CCG 5901, currently the largest ship in the Coast Guard.
The construction cost is about 68 billion yen (about 471 million US dollars), and the Japan Coast Guard’s budget request for the next fiscal year includes 3.43 billion yen.
The ship will deliver supplies and protect citizens during a major earthquake in the South China Sea or a military emergency in Taiwan. According to the Japan Coast Guard, it will also stop illegal fishing activities by foreign ships.
The patrol ship is 200 meters long and weighs 30,000 tons. Its capacity is three times that of the Japan Coast Guard’s 6,500-ton patrol ships.
In an emergency, the ship can accommodate 1,000 people, three helicopters and several rubber boats.
The ship will be put into service in 2029, and the deployment location has not yet been determined.
The Japan Coast Guard said that for security reasons, the new ship will serve as a naval base but will not be used in the territorial waters around Japan’s Senkaku Islands, which China claims sovereignty over, and will not be equipped with automatic guns.
