Japan Coast Guard will build the biggest patrol vessel in its history - Naval News
The Japan Coast Guard plans to build a "Multi-Purpose Patrol Vessel" (MPPV) which will be the largest vessel to ever join its fleet.
www.navalnews.com
Well a coast gard cutter arms race wasn't on my bingo card but here we are. To put this in perspective the current largest coast gard vessel is the Zhaotou-class patrol cutter at 12,000 tons, this vessel would be more then twice as big at 30,000 tons (and looks a lot like the Japanese helicopter destroyers). Japanese current largest coast gard vessel is the Shikishima-class patrol vessel at 9,300 tons ( ment to protect Japanese uranium delivery for reprocessing, although that only happened once) this new ship is ment to evacuate Japanese islands at the start of a hot war with China.