With FACs and expecially with Soviet made FACs one has to rememeber how intensive network the whole coastaldefence echelon was where the FACs were designed to be just one part of it.
Certainly their capabilities shouldn’t be dashed when such enverioment doesen’t exist (in Arab navies) and when used NOT in their desinged way (in Arab navies)
Like whit Soviet airdefences, the FACs are just one part of the picture as were the interceptors and the role of the shore based infastructure to controll these units should be also take into consideration. Like with Soviet interceptors, the small FACs were never designed to be the ones with priority of locating the targets nor even to destroy them. Shorebased radars, aircraft surveilance and dedicated EAW ships were part of the chain, supported by extensive minefield and fixed/Mobile coastal artillery (guns and missiles) elements.
In such enverioment the FACs own capacity to carry sufficent eletronics weren’t that huge handicap, neither was it ever likely to enemy helicopters to operate with similar freedom as in Falklands or in Iraq in the face of the Soviet Air defence network.
But if speaking of outside the Soviet philosophy the general handicaps of FACs are undeniable if compared to larger units. Offcourse larger ship can carry more stuff with more stable chasis.
But guys waving the corvette/frigate flag should always recall that FACs are mostly small navies (excluding Russia/China who still have their coastal defence well praised) tools and small navies have always been present with the proplem: Which is better, few more capaple, but larger (thus expensive) units that can match 1-on-1 against enemy or quantative of smaller and less expensive units that can actually give the luxury of expendability to the small navy?
History have myriad of examples of how useless fancy or shiny ship or two are to a small navy when the navy knows exactly that a single one ship vs ship engagement gone bad can suddenly cripple down 2/3 of your entire fleets combat capapilities.
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