In an attempt to bolster its influence and help improve regional security, Australia has announced a new Pacific Patrol Boat Program that will provide new patrol boats to twelve Pacific nations. The $1.88 billion program was announced on June 17 by Australia’s foreign and defense ministers. The new vessels will replace those previously donated by Australia that are approaching the end of their service life. The announcement signals Australia’s intention to keep its role as a regional leader through security assistance to its less wealthy island neighbors.
The new all-steel patrol boats will replace the twenty-two 162-ton Pacific-class patrol boats that Australia donated to its neighbors between 1987 and 1997 in the first Pacific Patrol Boat Program. The original impetus was the passage of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS divided formerly international waters mainly through the establishment of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) that extend 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers, or 230 miles) from the shores of each country. This had a particular impact on the small Pacific island states as they suddenly acquired the responsibility to police and regulate activities across vast stretches of water. For example, Kiribati alone has 3,441,810 square kilometers of EEZ, the 13th largest in the world, larger than the total land area of India. The new program will deliver patrol boats to Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Cook Islands – the original recipients of the program. In addition, Timor-Leste may become a beneficiary of this new program, raising the total number of recipients to thirteen.
These patrol boats have enabled countries with limited fiscal resources to patrol their territorial waters and EEZ. The lightly armed vessels, rarely featuring more than a medium machine gun, are suitable for maritime surveillance and patrol, as well as fisheries protection. The main concern, then as now, is that countries lacking the capability to monitor, police, and enforce the law in their EEZs could be the victim of overfishing by other states’ fishing fleets. The new program has an increased focus on combating transnational crime and, in the case of Timor-Leste, will likely also focus on combating illegal human migration – a particularly sensitive issue for Australia. They are not, however, combat vessels. In fact, the recipients of the previous Pacific Patrol Boat Program’s vessels varyingly operate them through their small defense forces or their police services. It is unlikely that such countries even have the fiscal and technical resources to operate true combat vessels, such as missile boats.
