Finnish Navy - Hamina class missile boat

A+ presentation, unfortunately these ships are worthless in a real war, where they will be sunk within the first day by ballistic missiles, against which there exists no defense whatsoever. A tragic waste of money. The only viable naval combat craft are small boats such as the Stridsbåt 90, although I suspect that it is pushing the limits size-wise. The Navy, whether Finnish or American or anything else, is like the French knights who got whooped at Agincourt by peasants and still didn't learn.

Why would the probable enemy use expensive ballistic missiles originally meant for strategic targets such as army depots, shipyards etc. to sink a single boat? That's what anti-ship missiles are for. The boat would never survive a saturation missile attack with just one 57 mm gun.

One could say that everything (ships, planes, tanks) is just tragic waste of money because all equipment can be defeated with a way or other and nuclear weapons will always have the last word.

Because the ballistic missiles are not expensive anymore and cannot be defeated by any defenses.

Tanks & other ground vehicles are useful because they can be hidden. A ship can't be hidden. It's in the water and there's no camouflage or cover to help against spotters. Modern fighter jets can often outrun incoming missiles. Naval warfare is outdated. The only useful naval ships are submarines or small patrol boats.

Hmm, apparently there are "anti-ship ballistic missiles" (or at least China has one type, DF-21, that has such capability). Still, I doubt they would be used against small boats like the Hamina class as such weapons are mainly meant for aircraft carriers and other high-profile targets. You don't need a gun to kill a fly. Also, while they have become cheaper, they are still extremely expensive and can only be afforded by the few superpowers like United States, Russia and China.

As for camouflaging, ships can also be "hidden" when they operate in the vicinity of land, such as in the Finnish archipelago.

I wouldn't count on fighter jets being capable of outrunning modern anti-aircraft missiles. Well, perhaps they could outrun the Umkhonto-IR used in the Hamina as it has a limited range and relatively low speed, but not faster long-range missiles like Aster 30 or Buk M1. Also, while fighter jets might be able to escape, bombers definitely don't.

But then again you have a point with the size of the vessel. I don't think that the Finnish Navy should get bigger surface combatants than this one, which is still classified as a boat.

Stridsbåt 90 and its Finnish near-equivalent, the Jurmo class, are, however, a bit too small to be used as the backbone of the navy. We need vessels capable of carrying anti-air- and anti-ship-weaponry.

Googling for "Stridsbåt 90" and looking at the image search, image #3 is a good example (from militaryphotos . net)

Unless I am vastly mistaken, this boat has enough space to mount 2 SAMs or SSMs, with two extra to reload. That's all one boat needs, Put 100 of these things out there supported by advanced coastal radar and add some ASW choppers to the mix. Voila, clear coasts and skies. Military leaders always live in the past. Finnish military is still fighting the Winter War.

I know what a Combat Boat 90 looks like and I still think it wouldn't make a very good platform for "heavy" naval weaponry. Perhaps you could throw in some man-portable AA missiles, but a single RBS-15 missile weighs around 800 kg. If you include the launch system, it's probably over one ton. The boat could probably carry two of those, but it would cause some serious stability problems...

But still I can't say that I don't like your idea of a 21st century torpedo boat.

One could also think why do you need boats at all. You could mount long-range SAMs and SSMs on a truck and fire them from the bushes. Then you'll only need ASW choppers to scare away the subs from harassing merchantmen and perhaps something to cover the asses of the helos.

Because it's a PR movie to show off the boat.

Another thing I found funny was that the Hamina shot down the incoming enemy anti-ship missile, but the four enemy ships supposedly had no anti-missile defences whatsoever :P