A fast attack craft (FAC) is a small, fast, agile, offensive, often affordable
warship
A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster a ...
armed with
anti-ship missile
An anti-ship missile (AShM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial guidance and active radar homing. A good ...
s,
gun
A gun is a ranged weapon designed to use a shooting tube (gun barrel) to launch projectiles. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns/cannons, spray guns for painting or pressure washing, p ...
or
torpedo
A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...
es. FACs are usually operated in close proximity to land as they lack both the
seakeeping
Seakeeping ability or seaworthiness is a measure of how well-suited a watercraft is to conditions when underway. A ship or boat which has good seakeeping ability is said to be very seaworthy and is able to operate effectively even in high sea stat ...
and all-round defensive capabilities to survive in
blue water
Maritime geography is a collection of terms used by naval military units to loosely define three maritime regions: brown water, green water, and blue water.
Definitions
The elements of maritime geography are loosely defined and their meanings hav ...
. The size of the vessel also limits the fuel, stores and water supplies. In size they are usually between 50–800 tonnes and can reach speeds of .
A fast attack craft's main advantage over other warship types is its affordability. Many FACs can be deployed at a relatively low cost, allowing a navy which is at a disadvantage to effectively defend itself against a larger adversary. A small boat, when equipped with the same weapons as its larger counterpart, can pose a serious threat to even the largest of capital ships. Their major disadvantages are poor seagoing qualities, cramped quarters and poor defence against aerial threats.
History
19th century
As early as the mid-19th century, the
Jeune École
The ''Jeune École'' ("Young School") was a strategic naval concept developed during the 19th century. It advocated the use of small, heavily armed vessels to combat larger battleships, and the use of commerce raiders to cripple the trade of the ...
's ''poussiere navale'' theory called for a great number of small, agile vessels to break up invading fleets of larger vessels. The idea was first put into action in the 1870s with the steam-powered
torpedo boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...
s, which were produced in large numbers by both the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
and the
French Navy
The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...
. These new vessels proved especially susceptible to rough seas and to have limited utility in scouting due to their short endurance and low bridges. The potential threat was entirely extinguished with the introduction of the torpedo boat destroyer (TBD) in 1893, a larger vessel which evolved into the modern
destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...
. It could mount guns capable of destroying the torpedo boat before it was within range to use its own weapons.
20th century
The idea was revived shortly before World War I with the craft using new gasoline engines. Italy and Great Britain were at the forefront of this design, with the
coastal motor boat (CMB) and the ''
motobarca armata silurante'' (MAS) (Italian: "torpedo armed motorboat"). The outstanding achievement of the class was the sinking of the Austro-Hungarian battleship by ''MAS. 15'' on 10 June 1918. The equivalent achievement for the CMBs was a lesser success; during the
Russian Civil War
, date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
CMBs attacked the Red Fleet at anchor at Kronstadt on 18 June 1919, sinking the cruiser for the loss of four craft.
The design matured in the mid-1930s as the
motor torpedo boats (MTBs) and
motor gunboat
The motor gun boat (MGB) was a small, high-speed British military vessel of the Second World War, which was armed with a mix of guns, in contrast to the physically similar motor torpedo boat (MTB), whose main offensive weapon were torpedoes. ...
s (MGBs) of the Royal Navy, the
PT boat
A PT boat (short for patrol torpedo boat) was a motor torpedo boat used by the United States Navy in World War II. It was small, fast, and inexpensive to build, valued for its maneuverability and speed but hampered at the beginning of the wa ...
s of the US Navy, and the
E-boat
E-boat was the Western Allies' designation for the fast attack craft (German: ''Schnellboot'', or ''S-Boot'', meaning "fast boat") of the Kriegsmarine during World War II; ''E-boat'' could refer to a patrol craft from an armed motorboat to a lar ...
s (''Schnellboote'') of the ''Kriegsmarine''. All types saw extensive use during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
but were limited in effectiveness due to the increasing threat of aircraft; however, some successes were achieved in favourable conditions, as showcased by the crippling of the cruiser (later scuttled), in the night of 13 August 1942, by
Italian MS boats.
Post-World War II
After World War II, the use of this kind of craft steadily declined in the United States and Britain, despite the introduction of safer diesel engines to replace the highly flammable gasoline ones, although the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
still had large numbers of MGBs and MTBs in service.
![HMS Ystad R142](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/HMS_Ystad_R142.JPG)
With the development of the
anti-ship missile
An anti-ship missile (AShM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial guidance and active radar homing. A good ...
, FACs were reborn in the Soviet Union as "
missile boat
A missile boat or missile cutter is a small, fast warship armed with anti-ship missiles. Being smaller than other warships such as destroyers and frigates, missile boats are popular with nations interested in forming a navy at lower cost. They a ...
s" or "missile cutters". The first few missile boats were originally torpedo boats, with the torpedo tubes replaced by missile launchers. Again, small fast craft could attack and destroy a major warship. The idea was first tested by the Soviet Union which, in August 1957, produced the which mounted two
P-15 Termit
The P-15 ''Termit'' (russian: П-15 "Термит"; en, termite) is an anti-ship missile developed by the Soviet Union's MKB Raduga, Raduga design bureau in the 1950s. Its GRAU designation was 4K40, its NATO reporting name was ''Styx'' or SS-N ...
missiles on a hull with a top speed of around . Endurance was limited to at and the vessels had supplies for only five days at sea. 110 Komar-class vessels were produced, while over 400 examples were built of the following with a significant portion of the total being sold to pro-Soviet nations.
The first combat use of missile boats was an attack by two Egyptian Soviet-built Komar-class boats on the Israeli destroyer
''Eilat'' on 20 October 1967, several months after the
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...
. The two boats launched a total of four P-15 missiles, three of which struck the ''Eilat'' and sank her with the loss of 47 crew dead or missing and over 90 wounded.
![Schnellboot Gepard-Klasse Typ 143 A](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Schnellboot_Gepard-Klasse_Typ_143_A.jpg)
The Soviet FACs prompted a
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
response, which became more intense after the sinking of ''Eilat''. The Germans and French worked together to produce a new FAC, resulting in the class, first commissioned in 1968. Built on a hull with four MM-38
Exocet
The Exocet () is a French-built anti-ship missile whose various versions can be launched from surface vessels, submarines, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.
Etymology
The missile's name was given by M. Guillot, then the technical director ...
missiles, a 76 mm gun forward and 40 mm twin guns aft, these vessels have a top speed of . Built until 1974, a total of 68 Combattante IIs were launched. The design was immediately followed by the
Combattante III, and a great many other shipyards produced their own versions of the Combattante, including the Israeli Sa'ar/''Reshef'' variants.
Size has also increased, some designs reaching up to
corvette
A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper (or " rated") warship. The warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the slo ...
size, 800 tonnes including a
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
, giving them extended modes of operation. While the Israeli s, for example, had a 58 metre hull and 415 ton displacement, the is 85 metres in length and displaces 1,065 tons, and is officially rated as a corvette.
Iran and North Korea have some of the largest numbers of FACs in operation today. North Korea alone operates more than 300,
[Hy Sang Lee: ''North Korea: A Strange Socialist Fortress'', p. 85] while Iran has been seen developing "swarm boats" to be used as harassing vessels in the heavily contested littoral waters of the
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Persis, Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a Mediterranean sea (oceanography), me ...
. To counter the threat, the
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
has been developing an ASUW Littoral Defensive Anti Surface Warfare doctrine, along with vessels such as the
littoral combat ship
The littoral combat ship (LCS) is either of two classes of relatively small surface vessels designed for operations near shore by the United States Navy. It was "envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant capable of defeat ...
.
See also
*
Gunboat
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.
History Pre-steam ...
*
Motor gunboat
The motor gun boat (MGB) was a small, high-speed British military vessel of the Second World War, which was armed with a mix of guns, in contrast to the physically similar motor torpedo boat (MTB), whose main offensive weapon were torpedoes. ...
*
Torpedo boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...
*
Motor torpedo boat
*
Missile boat
A missile boat or missile cutter is a small, fast warship armed with anti-ship missiles. Being smaller than other warships such as destroyers and frigates, missile boats are popular with nations interested in forming a navy at lower cost. They a ...
*
Patrol boat
A patrol boat (also referred to as a patrol craft, patrol ship, or patrol vessel) is a relatively small naval vessel generally designed for coastal defence, border security, or law enforcement. There are many designs for patrol boats, and the ...
References
{{Warship types of the 19th & 20th centuries
Ship types
Gunboat classes
Missile boat classes