VIGIL CONSILIUMSearch
Context. Not headlines.
Equipment catalogue · shared across conflicts

Naval vessel · Fast attack craft and armed small boats

IRGC Navy fast attack and small craft

The hundreds of fast, small, missile- and rocket-armed craft that are the Guard Navy's method — swarming boats built for a narrow, shallow, crowded sea in which mass and dispersion matter more than tonnage, and the vessels behind every tanker seizure and harassment incident reported in the Gulf.

IRGCN small craftIran, Sweden, United Kingdom, North Korea1980s Boghammars; domestic classes from the 2000s

Status as of
2026-09
Last reviewed
2026-09-09

AssessmentModerate confidence

Recognition context, not a stat sheet. The catalogue covers major publicly documented systems relevant to the conflicts Vigil covers — not an exhaustive order of battle. No quantities, availability or current allocations are recorded.

The recordWhat this system is, where it comes from, who operates it and which of Vigil’s modules it is relevant to — with the evidence each of those rests on.

FieldedEvidence: Confirmed
Silhouette · not to scale

Record

FamilyIRGCN small craft
VariantsPeykaap-class; Zolfaghar-class; Bladerunner-derived craft; Boghammar-type boats; Shahid-class catamarans
OriginIran, Sweden, United Kingdom, North Korea
Era1980s Boghammars; domestic classes from the 2000s
Appears inIran–Gulf 2026 war

Conflict relevance

This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.

Iran–Gulf · Force Atlas

Operators

Iran and the Gulf · Primary operator

Iran and the Gulf: The Guard Navy's signature force, distributed across its five naval districts.

Battlefield role

Harassment, boarding, seizure and swarm attack on shipping and warships at short range; the physical form of maritime pressure short of war.

Strengths

Cheap, numerous, hard to eliminate by striking a few targets, and suited to a geography that punishes large warships; dispersed basing along the whole Iranian Gulf coast.

Limitations

Coercive rather than decisive: the craft can raise the cost and risk of using the strait and have never physically closed it. Vulnerable to aircraft and to the armed helicopters and unmanned systems that escorts now carry. Numbers, bases and patterns are not recorded here.

Campaign relevance

Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.

Documented conflict use

Tanker seizures and boarding operations through the 2010s and 2020s, the harassment incidents that fill the maritime-incident ledger, and the Guard's own published exercises.

Branch & service operators

PartialConfidence: ModerateSources: IISS Military Balance↗ · Congressional Research Service — Iran, the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz · Iranian armed-forces institutional referenceMethodologyCorrections

Assessed as of2026-09Last reviewed2026-09-09