Protector-class patrol vessel
Ship class of patrol vessels
The Protector-class offshore patrol vessel (also known as the Otago class) is a ship class of two offshore patrol vessel (OPVs) operated by the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) since 2010. The ships are named HMNZS Otago and HMNZS Wellington.
Key dates
The Ministry of Defence issued invitations to register in July 2002 and signed a contract with Tenix Defence (later BAE Systems) in July 2004. The first steel was cut in February 2005, and the first OPV HMNZS Otago was launched on 18 November 2006 in Melbourne, Australia.
The original planned delivery date for HMNZS Otago was April 2007; this was then revised to early 2008. HMNZS Wellington was launched on 27 October 2007 with an original delivery date of May / June 2008.
While the ships are capable of carrying the SH-2G Seasprite, on 30 October 2007, the NZDF announced the acquisition of A109 light utility helicopters for training and deployment on RNZN ships, including the OPVs.
In September 2008, the Minister of Defence announced delays in the delivery of the two OPVs due to questions regarding the ships' seaboats and Lloyds Certification. He says the issue is under negotiation with BAE (ex-Tenix). In May 2009, mediation between the Ministry of Defence and BAE Systems commenced, with the main issue being the estimated 300 tonnes increase in weight which could cause potential hazard when OPVs are in ice in Antarctica as the weight increased over the life of the vessels.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3487317. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2002, 2004 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Protector-class patrol vessel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.