PNS Hangor (2024)

In April 2015, during a briefing to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Defence, PN representatives disclosed that the Pakistani government, then headed by prime minister Nawaz Sharif, had approved the purchase of eight attack submarines from China, at an estimated cost of US$4–5 billion.^[5] In October of the same year, Pakistan's minister of defense production Rana Tanveer Hussain announced that the deal for the eight submarines had been finalized, dislosing that four of the vessels would be built in China and Pakistan, respectively.^[6]

In January 2017, Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah, the-then PN Chief of Naval Staff, announced that the eight future submarines would be eponymously christened as the Hangor class, after PNS Hangor (S131), a Daphné-class submarine which the PN had used to sink INS Khukri, a Blackwood-class frigate of the Indian Navy, during the Indo-Pakistani naval hostilities of 1971.^[7]

The submarine was launched on 26 April 2024.^[8]On 30 April 2026, PNS Hangor was officially commissioned by the Pakistan Navy with a ceremony in Sanya, China.^[9][10]Publications from the U.S. Naval Institute indicate that Jinnah Naval Base is likely to be the vessels homeport.^[11]

• INS Kalvari