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United Kingdom

The first application of the hovercraft for military use was by the British Armed Forces, using hovercraft built by Saunders-Roe. In 1961, the United Kingdom set up the Interservice Hovercraft Trials Unit (IHTU) based at RNAS Lee-on-Solent (HMS Daedalus), now the site of the Hovercraft Museum, near Portsmouth. This unit carried out trials on the SR.N1 from Mk1 through Mk5 as well as testing the SR.N2, SR.N3, SR.N5 and SR.N6 craft. The Hovercraft Trials Unit (Far East) was established by the Royal Navy at Singapore in August 1964 with two armed hovercraft; they were deployed later that year to Tawau in Malaysian Borneo and operated on waterways there during the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. The hovercraft's inventor, Sir Christopher Cockerell, claimed late in his life that the Falklands War could have been won far more easily had the British military shown more commitment to the hovercraft; although earlier trials had been conducted in the Falkland Islands with an SRN-6, the hovercraft unit had been disbanded by the time of the conflict. Currently, the Royal Marines use the Griffonhoverwork 2400TD hovercraft, the replacement for the Griffon 2000 TDX Class ACV, which was deployed operationally by the marines in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.