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28 March 2024

Philippines’ 2nd warship to arrive in August

Published
By Correspondent

Around the first week of August, the Philippines will have its second warship acquired from the United States.

‘BRP Ramon Alcaraz’, named after Commodore Ramon Alcaraz, a World War II hero who shot down three enemy aircraft while on board an offshore patrol boat, has started its voyage to the Philippines from Charleston in South Carolina.

“Expectations are high but I am sure the men and women of the BRP Ramon Alcaraz will live up to those expectations,” the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC tweeted, quoting Captain Ernesto Baldovino, commanding officer of BRP Ramon Alcaraz, as saying.

In 2011, the Philippines acquired from the US the ‘BRP Gregorio del Pilar’, its first warship that underwent 450 million pesos (Dh38.37 million) worth of refurbishment. The 48-year-old warship is a Hamilton-class cutter.

The Philippine government acquired BRP ‘Ramon Alcaraz’, a 378-foot decommissioned US Coast Guard ship, in 2012 and spent 620 million pesos (Dh53.12 million) for its retrofitting and refurbishment.

An inquirer.net report said the warship had finished a month of sea trials before it left the US for the Philippines on Monday June 10 and is expected to arrive in early August.

“BRP Ramon Alcaraz gets ready for voyage to the Philippines,” the Philippine Embassy posted on its Twitter account @philippineusa on Monday.

The warship, a Hamilton-class weather high endurance cutter, had served the US Navy for four decades before the Philippine Navy purchased it under the Excess Defence Article Military Assistance Programme of the US.