Damen delivers fourth offshore patrol vessel to Pakistan Navy

Launched on February 19 at the Damen shipyard in Galati, Romania, the Yamama was delivered to the port of Constanta, in the Black Sea. This OPV 2600 PNS type patrol boat is the twin of de l’Hunain, launched in September 2023 and received this summer by Pakistan. These two vessels are an evolution of the Yarmook and Tabuk, delivered by Damen in 2020 and which were of the OPV 1900 model. The new units are larger and can be more powerfully armed by Pakistan, which will be responsible for embarking most of these systems, as well as the main sensors.

98 meters long with a width of 14 meters and a displacement of 2,600 tonnes, the OPV 2600 can carry around a hundred sailors. Capable of reaching 22 knots and covering 3,600 nautical miles at economical speed, their autonomy reaching one month, they have a platform that can accommodate a 5-tonne helicopter and niches for two semi-rigid boats of 11 meters and 6.5 meters.

If we refer to the synthetic images previously released by Damen, the Hunain and Yamama will be equipped with four Pakistani Herbah anti-ship missiles, a vertically launched surface-to-air system (probably MBDA’s Albatros NG retained for the corvettes Pakistani models of the Turkish Ada type, four examples of which are built between the shipyards of Istanbul and Karachi). The 76 mm turret initially planned should be replaced by a lighter remotely operated gun (a priori 30 mm) while the 35 mm Gokdeniz gun from the Turkish group Aselsan visible on the previous visuals has given way to a surface-air system with short range of the American RAM category. As for the main radar, it could be a system from the SMART-S family from Thales.

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