According to retired U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Kline and retired Swedish Navy Capt. Bo Wallander, of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Littoral Operations Center, such operations favored the bold and audacious. “For example, the Romans were better soldiers than sailors. To overcome their weakness and exploit their strength, they developed the corvus,  a device to hold their ships fast to an opponent’s and allow their soldiers to cross over to the enemy vessels where they could defeat their enemy,” they wrote in “Lions in the Littoral – Leadership on Risk’s Edge,” for the Swedish Royal Society of Naval Sciences.

Even recently, many navies use specialized units to carry out boarding operations, rather than relying on the ships’ crews, which Rear Adm. Massimo Annati, who is retired from the Italian Navy and now chairs the European Working Group for Non-Lethal Weapons, says is not very different from what was done for many centuries, when boarding was the core of naval warfare and an infantry fighting force was specifically embarked in any man-of-war.

Warships today are being designed with an eye to the requirements of the embarked military force, including additional accommodations and space for boats and special equipment, even holding cells for prisoners.

Steam propulsion and better artillery changed things, and naval warfare turned to sinking ships rather than taking them. “While there have been some notable exceptions, over the years the world’s navies lost the capability to carry out a boarding. Whenever called to this type of operation, crews had to resort to impromptu tactics, techniques and equipment,” said Annati. He is the author of the book, Boarders Away, Twenty-five Centuries of Shipboard Fighting, published in Italian by Murisa.

According to Annati, many navies today have designated special military units to carry out boarding operations, rather than relying on ship’s company, not so different from centuries past, when boarding was the core of naval warfare and an infantry fighting force was specifically embarked on a man-of-war. That changed when NATO navies were faced with complex embargo operations during both the Iraqi and Balkan conflicts. Boarding became more important, and also as new challenges surfaced and joined the old ones: piracy, terrorism, WMD transfer, narco-trafficking, and weapons smuggling.

“Boarding operations require a number of competencies and skills that are usually foreign to naval experience, including boat handling, getting onboard by multiple means, tactical and close-quarter operations, searching, and collecting intelligence and evidence,” said Annati.

Warships today are being designed with an eye to the requirements of the embarked military force, including additional accommodations and space for boats and special equipment, even holding cells for prisoners. New fast, long range, and high-capacity RHIBs are replacing the old whaler lifeboats, and new solutions for launching and recovering the boats, such as stern ramps, stabilized davits, and cranes, are faster and safer. New technologies provide dedicated communications and data links so teams can share imagery and biometric data with the parent warship, and the team can be advised of the recognized surface data picture around them.