Marine Protector cutter

The class leader USCGC Barracuda underway. Note the boat launching ramp at the stern. The fifty caliber machine guns mount on pintles, port and starboard, just forward of the red stripe. The black smudge in the hull abaft the superstructure is the exhaust of the port engine.
Class overview
Name:	Marine Protector class
Builders:	Bollinger Shipyards, Lockport, Louisiana
Operators:	United States Coast Guard
In commission:	1998-present
Active:	73
General characteristics
Displacement:	91 lt
Length:	87 ft (27 m)
Beam:	19 ft 5 in (5.92 m)
Draft:	5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)
Propulsion:	2 x MTU diesels
Speed:	25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph)+
Range:	900 nmi (1,700 km)
Endurance:	3 days
Complement:	10
Sensors and processing systems:	1 x AN/SPS-73 surface search radar
Armament:	2 × .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns
Notes:

The Marine Protector class is a class of coastal patrol boats of the United States Coast Guard. The 87-foot-long vessels are based on the Stan 2600 design by Damen Group, and were built by Bollinger Shipyards of Lockport, Louisiana. Each boat is named after a marine predator.

The Coast Guard placed its original order in 1999 for 50 boats, which were delivered by mid-2002. Several additional orders brought the class to a total of 74 ships, with the last, USCGC Sea Fox, being completed in October 2009. Four additional vessels were built for Foreign Military Sales, with two each going to Malta and Yemen.

The Marine Protector class replaced the 82-foot Point class . These older boats had one small and one large berthing area, and they had to stop for five or more minutes to deploy or retrieve their pursuit inflatable boat via a small crane. The last Point-class cutter was decommissioned in 2003.

Missions include combating drug smuggling, illegal immigration, marine fisheries enforcement and search and rescue support. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks many have a homeland security mission in the form of ports waterways and coastal security (PWCS) patrols.

Boarding parties can be launched while the vessel is underway, through the cutter's stern launching ramp. The attached rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB) has been upgraded since the initial inception of this class of cutter, in an effort to increase speed and sea state sustainability for boarding parties and rescue and assistance teams. The stern launching system requires just a single crewmember to remain on deck to launch or retrieve the boarding party.

Their high-speed pursuit boat uses the same diesel fuel as the cutters.