Surviving the swarm: navies eye new counters to the FIAC threat

摘要

The asymmetric surface threat is by no means a new phenomenon. In 1945, the US Pacific fleet lost a number of ships to Japanese Shinyo-type 'explosive motorboats' - vessels which were, to all intents and purposes, high-speed suicide craft. In the mid-1980s, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) began to field 'weaponised' Boghammar speedboats. Indeed, the IRGCN's unconventional use of these craft in the Gulf's 'tanker wars' of the late 1980s can in hindsight be seen as marking the birth of the fast inshore attack craft (FIAC) in the modern era.