On 17 December, the Pakistan Navy (PN) took delivery of its fourth – and, at least currently, last – Yarmouk-class offshore patrol vessel (OPV) from Damen Shipyards Group, the PNS Yamama.
The PNS Yamama is also the second of the PN’s Batch-II order, which was made up of a pair of Damen OPV 2600s. The OPV 2600 is larger and more capable than the OPV 1900s that formed the initial pair the PN ordered from Damen in 2017.
Like the three preceding Yarmouk-class OPVs, the PNS Yamama was constructed at Damen’s Galati Shipyard in Romania. The PN inducted the first pair of ships, the PNS Yarmouk and PNS Tabuk, in 2020, while the third OPV, PNS Hunain, was delivered earlier this year in July.
In 2020, then Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Admiral Zafar Mahmoud Abbasi, revealed that the PN was in talks for six OPVs of a “larger tonnage”. By that point, the PN inducted two Damen OPV 1900s, so those six additional vessels would have included the two OPV 2600s ordered later.
Operationally, a fleet of eight OPVs is quite significant. Until quite recently, the PN only operated six-to-eight ships with a displacement of over 2,000 tons. Today, it fields 16 such ships, and can potentially order more in the coming years.
This growth speaks to the PN’s broader 50-ship plan, which aims to secure Pakistan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and its primary sea-trade routes across several layers.
The first layer is the standard conventional warfare aspect, which aims to deter/thwart adversarial naval forces. But the second layer – where the OPVs operate – seeks to build enough coverage to stop asymmetrical and non-conventional threats, such as piracy.
This recent OPV induction still leaves the potential for an additional four ships, which Pakistan could acquire from either Damen Shipyards Group or, potentially, through an in-house platform designed in collaboration with Damen.
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