Fuciliere was powered by two sets of triple expansion steam engines fed by three Thornycroft water-tube boilers, producing an estimated 6,000 indicated horsepower (4,474 kW) and driving two propeller shafts.

[2] On 24 May 1915, the day after Italy's declaration of war, Fuciliere, Alpino, Carabiniere, and their sister ships Garibaldino and Lanciere conducted a patrol in the upper Adriatic Sea.

[2] On the nights of 3–4 May and 4–5 May 1916, Fuciliere and Zeffiro laid a minefield in the Adriatic Sea off Šibenik (known to the Italians as Sebenico) on the coast of Austria-Hungary.

[2] Escorted as far as the Austro-Hungarian defensive barrage by the scout cruisers Cesare Rossarol and Guglielmo Pepe and supported by Fuciliere — still under Bianchini's command — as well as Alpino and the coastal torpedo boats 40 PN and 46 OS, Zeffiro, under the command of Capitano di fregata (Frigate Captain) Costanzo Ciano and with Lieutenant Nazario Sauro, an Italian irredentist, aboard as pilot, entered the port of Poreč on the western side of Istria, a peninsula on Austria-Hungary's coast, at dawn on 12 June 1916.

All the Italian ships returned to base, although they suffered damage and a number of casualties, including four men killed in action.