Uruguayan Navy to decommission frigate ROU 01 Uruguay and two coastal patrol boats

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Uruguayan Navy has decided to decommission several vessels of different types and classes. The decision is taken in a context of internal turmoil, which has been dragging on for the last months and is now accentuated after more cases of possible embezzlement came to light a few hours ago.

The General Director of Naval Material of the Uruguayan Navy, Rear Admiral Otto Gossweiler, who since May has been questioning certain aspects of the accounts of the Institution, has now denounced undue payments during decades of monthly expenses to private maritime entities coming from the Navy budget funds and has disallowed their continuity, resulting in the temporary closure of some of these controversially subsidized organizations.

Amid this climate, the Uruguayan Navy has decided to decommission several of the ships in its fleet. The most important unit in terms of tonnage is the frigate ROU 01 “Uruguay” (ex “Joao Belo”), acquired, together with the already decommissioned ROU 02 “Comandante Pedro Campbell”, in April 2008 from Portugal for some US$20 million, in a controversial and technically ill-advised deal during the government of Tabaré Vázquez, which has never been used extensively.

Likewise, the ROU 22 “Oyarvide”, ex A-1457 “Helgoland” in the German Navy, flagged in 1998, an oceanographic vessel of national, international, and Antarctic trajectory, with which the Uruguay River, the La Plata River, and the Atlantic Ocean have been surveyed, after which modern and accurate nautical charts of the region have been drawn up, will be deprogrammed.

On the other hand, the coastal patrol boats ROU 10 “Colonia” and ROU 12 “Paysandú” -both from the ’60s, Cape Class- will be decommissioned given the arrival of the next three units of the Protector Class.

Also taken out of service are some of a batch of 9 original Class 44 motorboats, which arrived between 1998 and 1999 from USCG stocks and also built in the 1960s in Maryland, which, practically since 2015, have not been subjected to a major maintenance process.

With information from Grupo Edefa