INS Yaffo (1998)

INS Yaffo (אח"י יפו) is an Israeli missile boat of the Shayetet 3 Flotilla, one of ten Sa'ar 4.5-class missile boats. She was launched in 1998 at Israel Shipyards in the Port of Haifa. She has been a part of Israeli Navy since July 1, 1998.

Construction
Sa'ar 4.5-class missile boats are enlarged variant of the Sa'ar 4-class missile boat. New ships were quite longer, in order to take an augmented armament.

INS Yaffo was built at Israel Shipyards in the Port of Haifa. She was launched in 1998 and finished within few months.

Description
The length of Yaffo is 61.7 m, the breadth is 7.6 m and the draught is 2.5 m. This unit has a flush deck, short superstructure located in front of the midship and freeboard. The full load displacement is 488 tonnes. The main propulsion machinery are four compression-ignition MTU 16V538 TB93 engines, which total power is 16000 shp. The flank speed of this ship is 31 kn; the range is 3000 nmi at 17 kn and 1500 nmi at 30 kn.

The primary armament is two quadruple launchers of American Harpoon anti-ship missiles, allocated directly behind the superstructure. The missile is able to reach 130 km, the speed is 0.9 Mach, the warhead weighs 227 kg. To the aft of these launchers, six single launchers of Israeli Gabriel Mark II missiles are allocated, with a 75 kg warhead and a range of about 36 km. There are also two deck-mounted 8-fold anti-aircraft Barak 1 launchers with the range of 10 km.

The secondary armament consists of single, dual-purpose gun OTO Melara 76 mm, allocated abaft in a gun turret. The quadrant angle is 85°, the weight of the projectile is 6 kg, the range is 16 km and the rate of fire is 85 rounds per minute (RPM). There are also two single Oerlikon 20 mm cannon with a range of 2 km and rate of fire of 900 RPM and one double (or quadruple) station for M2 Browning machine guns. Fore, close-in weapon system, Phalanx CIWS, is located.