MUARA, 11-12 September 2018 – The Royal Brunei Navy (RBN) had received a two-day visit from the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) with an aim to familiarize key senior leaders within the RAN Offshore Patrol Vessel Project with the Patrol Vessel 80 (PV80) platform and seek to share understanding of the maintenance, sustainment and logistic challenges the RBN face with this capability.
Present as delegates for the visit was Commodore Stephen Hughes (Director General Littoral RAN), accompanied by Mr Peter Croser (Director General Ship Acquisition), Captain Nicholas Stoker (RAN Project SEA 1180-1) as well as Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hauser (Australian’s Deputy Defence Attaché to Singapore & Brunei).
The visit starts off with a Courtesy Call to the Commander of RBN, First Admiral Pengiran Dato Seri Pahlawan Norazmi bin Pengiran Hj Muhammad, at RBN Headquarters. During the call, the Commander of RBN expressed his pleasure for the warm and friendly bilateral relations between the two countries.
The visit continued with a sharing session between RBN and RAN delegates led by RBN Commandant Support Service, where the information sharing session was officially commenced with an opening remarks. The session covered on the experiences, challenges and lessons learnt with RBN PV80 sustainment plan from the aspect of maintenance and logistic (past and current), sharing on some significance systems issues, as well as RBN initiatives mitigations and way ahead. RAN also briefly shared their considerations and challenges for introduction of OPV into the service, and also shared the current project status with RBN.
On the second day of the visit, the delegates from the RAN had the opportunity to visit KDB DARUSSALAM. This part of the visit was also very valuable to the RAN delegation since they could make a better evaluation onboard. They also witnessed and experience the RHIC launching and continued with a short sea ride around the vicinity.
The visit ended with a dialogue session from both sides on the way ahead in the potential of establishing a PV80 user group where this initiatives has been proposed by the RAN.
