The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Strategic Acquisitions to Boost Maritime
Security

All eyes are currently on the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, the country's newest enforcement agency and one with a substantial budget to spend for new assets and capabilities. How will the agency spend this money and what are its priorities in the coming years? Mr Ghazmi Mahmud and Mr Jasbir Singh from LIMA Maritime’s official publications recently spent some time with the agency's Director General, Vice Admiral Mohammad Nik.

The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency will purchase six helicopters this year, three Eurocopter Dauphins and another three AgustaWestland AW139 aircraft.

The three Eurocopter helicopters will be based in Subang and will be used to provide surveillance and SAR support in the Malacca Straits. The larger AW139 helicopters will be based in Kuantan for the East Coast and East Malaysia for the same purpose. The plan is to acquire these helicopters sometime later this year, and a second batch of helicopters will be acquire later on.

All together, the MMEA plans to operate 15 helicopters in the mid-term, said the agency's Director General Vice Admiral Dato' Mohammad Nik. "The use of air platforms will have a significant effect on MMEA operational capability. Having daily aircraft on standby MMEA will be able to respond quickly to immediate and emergency requirements particularly in support of enforcement operations and search and rescue. "

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He said the MMEA will operate rotary and fixed-wing aircraft to enable effective coverage over Malaysia vast maritime area. "The fixed wing aircraft will be utilized for wide aerial surveillance and SAR duties and these aircraft equipped with additional amphibious capability will have a wide range of operations that include enforcement , interdiction, pollution and environmental control and search and resue".

He said helicopters are essential in a SAR role particularly in rescue missions and the platforms can be further utilized for special tasks such as aerial boarding, interdiction and coastal patrols.

"The acquisition of helicopters will also permit the MMEA to realise the full potential of the MMEA's Offshore Patrol Vessels." Aside from the acquisition of aircraft, Vice Admiral Mohammad said the MMEA also need to modernise its vessels and further improve its operational capabilities.

"The MMEA has inherited it resources (human resource and assets) from 5 different maritime agencies with different organizational background, work culture, institutional beliefs and tradition." "With exception of one new ship from Japan, all other ships and boats were inherited from various maritime agencies such the Royal Malaysian Police, Royal Malaysian Navy, Royal Custom, Marine and Fisheries Departments. "Many of them were already in service for more than 20 years and in fact 15 ships from RMN had already in service for more that 35 years. "Most of the ships have almost reached end of service life. We just could not operationalize all these vessels because many of them need to undergo extensive repairs hence obviously it has an impact on the MMEA's operational capabilities. "Therefore, there are restriction to put up continuously certain number of ships at sea so as to meet our operational requirement. "

In view of this, he said the focus now was also on the asset renewal plan. "The asset renewal plan as far as MMEA is concerned, generally takes two forms. The first type of renewal plan is to refurbish or upgrade equipment already fitted on board the present MMEA vessels.

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"This exercise is important and has to be done now in order to render the ships capable of conducting the main tasks and functions of the organization. Such equipment is typically for the improvement in the aspect of navigation, communication, crew habitability, day and night surveillance and reliability to stay at sea
for longer period."

Vice Admiral Mohammad said the second type of renewal is the purchase of various types of vessels. "Some new assets in the pipe line to be acquired by MMEA include amphibious aircraft, medium lift and light medium helicopters, Offshore Patrol Vessels and Sea Surveillance System for Sabah coast lines."
In doing so, Vice Admiral Mohammad said the use of digital technologies will also be looked at to enhance the MMEA capability in conducting it tasks and functions.