The geopolitical environment and the future naval/air/sea battlefield present demanding challenges for structure, equipment and tactical employment. Conventional warfighting in support of national territorial defence will remain the benchmark against which armed forces must train and prepare, involving the commitment of combined arms in a battlespace where the capability to rapidly manoeuvre and concentrate fire will be at a premium. However, it is operations other than conventional war that are likely to remain a more common form of commitment, ranging from border skirmishes to counter-insurgency to participation in UN or coalition peacekeeping operations.

Within this developing trend toward greater tactical flexibility, advances in the design and construction of new, lightweight and highly agile boats, coupled to improvements in onboard weapon system lethality (including missile-firing capabilities), fire control, and situational awareness have begun to blur the traditional strengths and weaknesses of larger ships such as corvettes and frigates, and small, highly manoeuvrable vessels such as the X18. This demand for greater tactical agility and capability comes at a time when parallel constraints of reduced defence budgets and increasing equipment costs lead to additional pressure to develop multi-purpose solutions.