CIPPB Te Kukupa II

Te Kukupa II is a Guardian-class patrol boat built in Australia for the Cook Islands. It replaced the original CIPPB Te Kukupa, supplied to the Cook Islands three decades earlier. Her crew is drawn from the Cook Islands Police Service.

Australia supplied 22 Pacific Forum-class patrol boats to 12 of its smaller Pacific Forum allies when the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea established that maritime nations controlled an economic exclusion zone 200 km off their coasts.

Design
Australia designed the vessels to use commercial off the shelf components, rather than cutting edge military grade components, to make it easier to maintain the vessels in small, isolated shipyards. The vessels have a maximum speed of 20 kn, and have a complement of approximately 20 crewmembers. They are able to launch and retrieve a pursuit boat from a stern launching ramp without requiring bringing the vessel to a halt.

Operational history
Te Kukupa II was launched in January 2022. It was formally handed over to the Cook Islands at a ceremony on 9 June 2022, and arrived in Rarotonga on 20 July 2022.

In August 2022 it transported covid-19 vaccines to Palmerston Island.