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New riverine boats are fast, lethal, flexible

If the Stryker armored combat vehicle were a boat, it might be the CB90, a Swedish-designed shallow-water vessel that’s fast, lethal and flexible enough to be an ambulance or a fast-attack craft.

The Navy has decided to buy two of the boats, now known in certain Navy circles as the Riverine Command Boat, for use by the newest incarnation of the brown-water navy, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command’s riverine group.

Already in use with navies around the world, the CB90 originally was a product of the Swedish boatmaker Dockstavarvet. SAFE Boats, based in Washington state, bought the licenses required to build the same boat for the Navy. There are more than 240 in use around the world, from Malaysia to Greece.

“The Mexican navy has about 60 of them. Brazil has a bunch, the Swedish navy, Norway,” company spokesman Bryan Wood said. “The [U.S.] Navy expressed an interest, but because it was built in Sweden, they couldn’t buy it.”

Now the Navy can.

Navy officials got a good look at the RCB in June during an annual conference on small combatant craft at Little Creek, Va. The Navy wants to buy the demonstrator on display at the show for about $2 million, Wood said. It also has contracted SAFE Boat to build a second boat to specific requirements for about $2.8 million. The first boat is already in Norfolk, Va., Wood said, and the second should be delivered by June.

“We’ve got the contract and we’re ramping up production right now,” he said. “But the Navy might ask for an earlier delivery.”

Flexible force

The RCB is designed for maximum adaptability. It has an airy, aircraft-style cockpit with two operator seats and a middle jump seat that swings into and out of place. It has a head just below the cockpit divided by a passageway that leads to a bow ramp, so troops can be put ashore quickly.

The bow and hull are heavily reinforced so operators can run the boat up on a rocky stretch of beach to disembark riders without worry, Wood said.

“There are not many environments it can’t pull into and away from,” he said. “That’s one of the things the Navy found desirable, that it’s capable and proven.”

Although the vessel is built on metric measurements, it measures about 49 feet long and more than 12 feet wide. Powered by Swedish-built Scania engines, it has a Rolls-Royce jet-propulsion system that allows speeds of more than 43 knots. Meant to operate in rivers and other shallow waterways, it has a three-foot draft.

While the Navy declined to offer details on how or where the RCB will operate in the near future, a Navy official at the Pentagon said in a written statement that the boats are intended for use in the command role.

“The initial craft being procured will be used to develop RCB tactics, techniques and procedures before becoming a fully operational and deployable capability, and may, in the future, be used as a test platform for capability enhancements,” the official wrote.

Depending on the mission, it can bristle with weapons from six different mounts. Wood said the boat on order has a remote-controlled weapon mount for a .50-caliber machine gun — or other weapon — on a mast behind the cockpit. It will also have a twin weapon mount on the bow that is controlled from the cockpit, as well as four mounts for crew-served weapons elsewhere on the boat. The mounts include electrical power supply to allow the use of mini-guns.

The ship has cabin space that can be configured to carry more than 20 troops or serve as a floating command post with extra communication gear.

The space also allows rigging as a dive boat with portable hyperbaric chamber, or strictly as a gunboat with options to mount machine guns, grenade launchers, a mortar tube and Hellfire missiles.

It has been used in other navies as an ambulance. It can also be rigged for extended voyages with racks and a galley. The Swedish navy loads its boats in the well deck of amphibious warfare ships, although the RCB is not meant for long sea transits.

“It doesn’t have the range, but it can be an open-water boat,” Wood said.

Improved SURCs

Easily identifiable by the round flotation collars that wrap around the hulls of their boats, SAFE Boat products are already familiar to the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. SAFE Boats makes the Small Unit Riverine Craft that the Marine Corps used for years and has turned over to the Navy’s riverine units operating in Iraq. It also makes the Defender-class patrol boat in use by the Coast Guard.

Once the Navy took over the riverine mission, several upgrades were made to the SURCs — now called Riverine Patrol Boats — that had seen so much use from the Marines. The Navy replaced bolt-on Humvee armor with a lighter material, wired up electrical power supply at the gun mounts and improved the optics and communication equipment.

“They’re built more around night operations,” Wood said.

The Navy has about 24 of the improved SURCs and has orders with SAFE Boats to buy more RPBs.

“The Navy will eventually procure a total of 18 Riverine Patrol Boats that will initially complement and eventually replace most of the SURCs transferred to the Navy by the Marine Corps,” according to the Navy official.

The new RCB has stirred up a lot of interest in the Navy, Wood said — both from the new conventional riverine force, the naval special warfare community and surface warfare operators.

But some aspects of the new boat will be kept under wraps.

“We can’t say everything we want to say, because the Navy doesn’t want us to,” he said.