The Finnish Navy introduced the novel Squadron 2000 concept in 1997. That concept is based on operations with two vessel types, advanced monohull command vessels working together with smaller but faster and more versatile hovercrafts. The benefits of this hybrid squadron are very easily expressed. The squadron can utilize more effectively fairly broken and shallow waters of Finnish coastline. The task of Finnish Navy is to guard and protect Finnish territorial water line, which is 675 nautical miles long. The Finnish economical life is quite much dependable on good connections into European continental countries. The main partition of export and import of good is transported via seaways. The main benefits of hovercraft are high speed, operability all around the year and independence from traditional routes. They provide the Finnish Navy all year round capabilities for recognition and other operational tasks. The length of the T-2000 hovercraft is 28,4 and the width 15,4 metres. The speed requirement was 50+knots. The approximate weight of the craft is 90 tons of which the dead weight is about 20 tons.
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