The Royal Australian Navy has started retiring its veteran Armidale patrol boats, with the HMAS Maitland decommissioned after 16 years of service.
They'll be replaced by a dozen much larger Arafura class offshore patrol vessels, which can remain at sea for longer periods and travel further, in the face of growing tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.
“HMAS Maitland has steamed 435,054 nautical miles,” Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Evain, the vessel’s commanding officer, told a ceremony in Darwin.
“That’s the equivalent distance of a return trip to the moon.”
The ship and its crew were on the frontline during Operation Sovereign Borders in 2013, protecting Australia’s borders and intercepting people smugglers at sea.
The 300-tonne Maitland also served in the Solomon Islands helping to protect the island nation’s borders and fisheries.
This included providing a near-continuous patrol boat presence on the Solomon Islands’ western border in early 2021 to stop COVID-19 from coming ashore.
“She has seen extensive operations in the region, particularly around the northern part of Australia but also she has deployed into the southwest Pacific,” Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Michael Noonan said.
“The men and women who have served in her have made a significant contribution to our national interest.”
HMAS Maitland was named after the City of Maitland in NSW and the WWII naval training base in Newcastle.
Since commissioning in 2006, the 57-metre vessel has worked alongside Border Force, Australian Fisheries, and the Australian Federal Police.
This has included counter-terrorism operations, patrolling the waters around Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, and protecting fishing grounds in the Pacific Ocean.
Maitland is the second Armidale-class patrol boat to be decommissioned after HMAS Pirie. The remaining 11 Armidales will be phased out of service over the next two years.
The 1640 tonne Arafura-class boats will also be used for constabulary missions, maritime patrol, and response duties.
The first of the new 80-metre long vessels was launched in December.
They will incorporate state-of-the art sensors and command and communications systems, improving operational capability alongside Australian Border Force vessels, other Australian Defence Force units and Australia’s regional partners.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton says the navy’s patrol boats were becoming increasingly important amid the growing regional tensions to the nation’s north and east.
“As we enter a period of unprecedented regional instability and uncertainty, we again forge ahead with this new capability and with new confidence,” he said in December.
The navy’s Cape-class patrol boats will be used during the transition from the Armidale patrol boats to the Arafura-class vessels.
