Gladding-Hearn delivers 69' patrol boat to NYPD

Wide open it hits 42 knots, is built with ballistic-resistant windows and panels, and has a couple of non-lethal weapons. That’s the 69'×19' tactical-response boat delivered to the New York City Police Department in April by Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding in Somerset, Mass.

The new patrol boat is the first of two 69' vessels for the NYPD Harbor Unit that are based on a design from C. Raymond Hunt Associates in New Bedford, Mass. Gladding-Hearn used the same design for 12 submarine escort boats built in 2008–2009 for the Navy. The major difference between the boats is that the tactical-response boat’s superstructure is much larger. “It has enough room in the salon and enough communication equipment and monitors to serve as a command and control center for an incident,” said Gladding-Hearn’s Peter Duclos. That’s one of the roles the boat can play. Others include search and rescue, crowd control monitoring, and transporting a tactical squad team to a terrorist event. For search-and-rescue work there’s port and starboard recesses in the deck with a davit for lifting a Stokes litter basket onto the main deck, which is heated for winter operations. For crowd control operations, a remote controlled water cannon delivering 1,500 gpm at 150 psi from Elkhart Brass can be used. “They won’t be putting out fires with it,” said Duclos, “but it will knock someone down.” An acoustic device from LRAD Corp. can also be used to control crowds. “It has a very piercing sound. You can hail someone at a long range,” said Duclos. “At close range it will bring a person down to his knees.” There’s also a nuclear, biological and chemical filtration system that pressurizes the interior spaces while supplying filtered fresh air. Duclos didn’t want to talk too much about the ballistic-resistant panels, but said that for a boatyard using them for the first time “there is a big learning curve. It’s a difficult material to work with. It doesn’t work well with conventional tools and has to be cut with a waterjet.” The material is also very expensive, so it’s good not to make a mistake. When it’s time to haul a tactical team where it needs to go in a big hurry, there’s plenty of power in two MTU 12V2000M94 diesels that put out 1,920-hp each at 2,450 rpm. They are matched up with HamiltonJet HM571 waterjets through ZF-3050 marine gears. The second tactical-response boat was due for delivery in June. — Michael Crowley