Croatian Navy warships have to be towed around like junk. Two missile gunboats had to be towed into city harbour of Šibenik. Landing ship “Cetina” towed gunboat “Dmitar Zvonimir”, while a towing ship from “Brodospas” (Ship Rescue) towed gunboat “Petar Krešimir IV” to proximity of “Dmitar Zvonimir”. Latter was then towed into shipyard, while the landing ship took over “Petar Krešimir” and towed it away. This is likely a consequence of lack of technical cadre capable of maintaining the ships combined with their overuse in recent exercises and NATO missions. In 2018. alone ships had taken part in more exercises than in several years before combined.
Such situation had already happened three times this year. In one of these incidents, 24.4.2018., missile gunboat “Dmitar Zvonimir” was towed out of the harbour by an even older “Dubrovnik” (“Petar Krešimir”: launched and commissioned 1992., “Dubrovnik”: ex-FNS-63 “Kotka”, launched and commissioned 1986., commissioned to Croatian Navy in 2009.).
Source: https://www.hop.com.hr/2018/11/21/hrm-slepa-svoje-raketne-topovnjace-kao-stare-kante/, http://morski.hr/2018/11/21/skandal-u-hrm-u-nakon-vojnih-vjezbi-topovnjace-vuku-konopima/
Looks like a trend if this has happened several times already IMO.
They have to find out the root causes of this and fix. It may very well be that it is simply more economical to invest in some new warships.
LikeLike
Might be.
LikeLike
Problems with maintenance are endemic in NATO. Apparently most of the German Airforce Eurofighter Typhoons aren’t flight-able it has gotten so bad that in several cases they had to ask the French Airforce to handle interception duties in German Airspace. The German submarine fleet also is lacking in maintenance, apparently they can scramble only one submarine and only in emergency. And lets not even get started on how they rejected a new ship because it was listing. At least the Croatian Navy has the excuse of having old equipment produce in another country, the Germans apparently aren’t even capable to maintain new equipment that they produce.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, that is true. It seems that German Army spends more money on social programs and similar than on the job it is actually supposed to be doing.
LikeLike