The P628 vessel donated by the United States government has arrived at the Port of Colombo, Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation Janitha Ruwan Kodithuwakku said, with the formal handover to the Sri Lanka Navy scheduled to take place on Thursday at the East Terminal under the patronage of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Newswire reported.
The Deputy Minister said the vessel will strengthen Sri Lanka’s maritime security and coastal surveillance operations, marking a significant milestone in joining the Sri Lanka Navy.
The arrival closes a transfer process that began in April, when US Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Stephen Koehler met Sri Lanka Navy Commander Vice Admiral Kanchana Banagoda in Honolulu to finalise the donation of the former US Coast Guard cutter. The P628 — built originally as a US Coast Guard Reliance-class medium endurance cutter — is one of the larger offshore patrol assets transferred to the Sri Lanka Navy under US security cooperation programmes in recent years.
The Thursday ceremony at the East Terminal places the vessel directly under presidential patronage, signalling the transfer’s diplomatic weight in the broader US-Sri Lanka defence cooperation relationship. The handover lands on the same day that a researcher at the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies warned that Sri Lanka’s maritime security threats are outpacing the institutional capacity needed to manage them, citing trafficking, IUU fishing, marine pollution, cyber threats and submarine cable vulnerabilities across the country’s 517,000-square-kilometre Exclusive Economic Zone.
The P628 transfer joins a growing list of foreign-navy hardware and training engagements at Colombo, including the recent port calls by Indian and Pakistani naval vessels on June 1 and the Regional Centre for Maritime Studies’ 300-officials training programme in France.
