One of major naval production projects in Iran,[1] it delivered Iran's first ever domestically-built warship in 2003.[2] Abhijit Singh, a senior fellow at Observer Research Foundation described the project as "a proud testimony of Iran’s abilities at reverse engineering".[3] According to Anthony Cordesman, Sina class ships have been "heavily updated" in comparison to the French-made La Combattante II typeKaman class.[4] As of 2012, reportedly 10 ships were planned in this class.[5]
Armament
Ships of this class are equipped with four box launchers with C-802 or Noor, as well as one 76 mm (3 in) main gun.[1]
Ships in the class
As of 2015, four ships (Sina 5 to 8) were under construction, two of them in the Caspian Sea and the other two at Bandar Abbas.[6] In 2020, Farzin Nadimi of The Washington Institute wrote that production of these ships has not improved as expected.[7]
^Singh, Abhijit (2010), "Dark Chill in the Persian Gulf – Iran's Conventional and Unconventional Naval Forces", Maritime Affairs, 6 (2), National Maritime Foundation: 113, doi:10.1080/09733159.2010.559788, ISSN1946-6609
^Cordesman, Anthony (2016), "The Gulf: How Dangerous is Iran to International Maritime Security?", in Krause, Joachim; Bruns, Sebastian (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security, Routledge, p. 108, ISBN9781138840935
^Nugent, Bob; Cohen, Josh (2012), "The Gulf State Navies"(PDF), Naval Forces (1), AMI International: 32
