5 May 2010
the capacity for search and rescue
Just a brief reminder of one of the central aspects of control over the NSR – the capacity to mount search and rescue operations. A local newspaper from Vladivokstok reminds its readers of the rescue of two fishing boats from the ice back in January by an ice-breaker from the Sakhalin shipping company. (There is more from this blog on search and rescue here).
The rescue also involved Mi-8 helicopters and these too were involved in rescue operations from the ice in recent days.
These are the kinds of boats that are needed and this report announces that the Amur shipbuilding company is to build a 7 megawatt ice-breaker and that it is continuing to work on ‘по корвету нового поколения’ – a new generation of corvettes for shipping in the Far East.
It is not clear to me whether this is the same class of small ice-breakers being built by the Almaz shipbuilding company, the first of which was launched earlier in the year and whose purpose is partially to assist in the clearing up of oil spills.
