On Monday, shortly after news broke of a potential $1.3 billion dollar budget cut for the United States Coast Guard, the service announced the deployment of its newest vessel to Washington for a series of official tours.
In a media advisory, the Coast Guard said that the Sentinel-class cutter Lawrence Lawson and her crew would be at the D.C. Fireboat Pier on Wednesday for a press tour, a short stopover before her official commissioning at Cape May, New Jersey.
The Coast Guard says that the Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutter offers numerous improvements over the aging 110-foot Island-class patrol boats it replaces. The Lawson is 154 feet long, has a beam of 25 feet and a maximum sustained speed of more than 28 knots. She is armed with a stabilized 25mm machine-gun mount and four crew-served .50-caliber machine guns.
Read full story here: Coast Guard Sends Cutter to Washington
