May 27, 2026 —
The Coast Guard accepted delivery of the 62nd fast response cutter (FRC), Vincent Danz, on Feb. 26 in Key West, Florida. Vincent Danz will be the fourth FRC to be homeported in Apra Harbor, Guam.
The Sentinel-class FRCs replaced the 1980s-era Island-class 110-foot patrol boats and possess state-of-the-art command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, with improved habitability and seakeeping. Seventy-seven FRCs have been ordered to date.
Each FRC is named after an enlisted Coast Guard hero who performed extraordinary service in the line of duty. Petty Officer 2nd Class Vincent Danz, a Coast Guard reservist and port security specialist and an officer in the New York Police Department (NYPD), was killed while rescuing victims after the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Danz joined the NYPD after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, and spent 14 years on the force, eventually serving in the Emergency Services Unit.
Danz was posthumously awarded the NYPD Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during 9/11 President George W. Bush awarded all the public safety officers killed during the attack the 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor on Sept. 9, 2005. In June 2021, the Coast Guard dedicated Coast Guard Sector New York’s unaccompanied personnel house facility in honor of Danz.
FRCs operate in a wide variety of areas, including critical maritime border zones, and conduct drug and alien interdictions, joint international operations and national defense of ports, waterways and coastal areas as well as search and rescue and fishery patrols. In February 2025, Coast Guard Cutter Emlen Tunnell, as part of Combined Task Force 150, successfully interdicted nearly 2,400 kilograms of illegal narcotics through a New Zealand-led operation in the Arabian Sea.
Sixty-one FRCs are in service: 13 in Florida; seven in Puerto Rico; six each in Alaska, Bahrain and Massachusetts; four in California; three each in Guam, Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey and Mississippi; and two each in North Carolina and Oregon.
For more information: Fast Response Cutter Program page