Pakistan Highlights Babur-Class Corvettes' Potential With PNS Khaibar's Precise Hits in Trials.

The Pakistan Navy’s second Babur class corvette, PNS Khaibar, has completed live fire trials using Türkiye’s ADVENT combat management system to score direct hits with its 76 mm and 25 mm guns. The results signal a major step toward the ship’s fleet induction and highlight Pakistan’s push for more networked, multi-mission naval capabilities.

The Turkish defense software company HAVELSAN announced on 18 November 2025 that the Pakistan Navy corvette PNS Khaibar has completed live-fire trials under the PN MILGEM program, using the ADVENT combat management system to deliver direct hits during shore bombardment with its 76 mm main gun and repeat that accuracy with the Aselsan STOP 25 mm remote-controlled stabilized gun. The tests were conducted with HAVELSAN acting as Combat System Main Integrator, alongside Turkish state-owned contractor ASFAT, ahead of PNS Khaibar’s formal induction into the fleet.
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PNS Khaibar, a Babur-class corvette, combines ADVENT combat management, Harbah missiles, Albatros NG air defense, and a 76 mm gun to give Pakistan a modern multi-mission surface combatant (Picture source: HAVELSAN).

PNS Khaibar is the second Babur-class, or PN MILGEM, corvette, a heavier derivative of Türkiye’s Ada-class optimized for multi-mission operations rather than purely anti-submarine warfare. At around 108 meters in length and close to 3,000 tons full-load displacement, the ship uses a CODAG arrangement with two diesels and a single LM2500 gas turbine, delivering speeds above 26 knots, a range of roughly 3,500 nautical miles and endurance of about 15 days. The platform carries a 10-tonne-class helicopter, most likely a Z-9EC or similar ASW asset, and has a stern flight deck, enclosed hangar and RHIB bays configured for boarding and special operations.

The Babur-class moves well beyond the original Ada standard. As its primary air-search sensor, PNS Khaibar mounts an Aselsan-produced Thales SMART-S Mk2 3D S-band radar, paired with Alper low-probability-of-intercept navigation radar, the SeaEye-AHTAPOT EO suite, and Piri infrared search and track, enabling 360-degree tracking of air and surface targets at ranges out to roughly 250 km. For anti-submarine warfare, it relies on the Meteksan Yakamos hull sonar and the Aselsan HIZIR torpedo countermeasure system with towed and expendable decoys. The offensive fit combines six Harbah dual-role anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles with two triple 324 mm lightweight torpedo launchers, a Gokdeniz 35 mm CIWS, the Leonardo 76/62 Super Rapid gun and twin STOP 25 mm mounts.

Where the PN variant most clearly diverges from Ada is in air defense and overall combat architecture. Pakistan traded the U.S. RAM system used on Turkish ships for the Gokdeniz gun-based CIWS and installed a 12-cell bow VLS for MBDA’s Albatros NG, a CAMM-ER derivative with a range beyond 45 km, giving the small hull a genuine area-defense envelope. Combined with the Harbah land-attack capability, PNS Khaibar is configured as a compact multi-role escort that can protect a task group, counter air and missile threats and strike ashore, rather than a simple coastal corvette.

The gunnery trials underscored how ADVENT links this weapon suite. The 76/62 Super Rapid gun offers a rate of fire up to 120 rounds per minute, with conventional HE shells reaching 16–20 km and guided Vulcano ammunition, if adopted, extending naval fire support to around 40 km. The STOP 25 mm system, using a stabilized 25×137 mm KBA cannon with dual-feed and independent EO sensors, delivers up to 600 rounds per minute and can prosecute small fast craft and low-slow air targets while slaved to the combat system or used in autonomous surveillance mode. Together, these guns give PNS Khaibar a flexible layered response in the littoral: precision shore bombardment, warning and disabling fire, and last-ditch defense against swarm attacks.

HAVELSAN’s ADVENT network-supported, data-integrated CMS uses an open, modular architecture built for force-level operations rather than single-ship fighting, supporting NATO links such as Link-11/16/22, SIMPLE and JREAP alongside Pakistan’s own Naval Information Exchange System and “Link Green.” It fuses radar, sonar, EO, ESM, navigation and communications data into a common tactical picture, enabling cooperative engagement, shared targeting and synchronized emissions control across surface and air assets. HAVELSAN’s FLEETSTAR platform data distribution system underpins this picture as the digital “heart” of the ship, collecting and time-synchronizing high-rate sensor and navigation feeds and redistributing them to all subsystems with low latency and high redundancy. For Pakistan, adopting the full ADVENT–FLEETSTAR stack creates a second, non-Chinese digital combat ecosystem alongside its Chinese-built Tughril-class frigates and forthcoming Hangor submarines.

The PN MILGEM program dates to a 2018 contract with ASFAT for four ships, two built at Istanbul Naval Shipyard and two at Karachi Shipyard under an extensive transfer-of-technology and intellectual property package. Beyond hull construction, Pakistan receives design rights and integration know-how, theoretically allowing it to evolve the design into the future Jinnah-class and to select alternative weapons or sensors without returning to the original OEM. This aligns with the broader MILGEM philosophy in Türkiye itself, which sought not only a modern corvette but an indigenous supply chain and export-ready naval industry.

PNS Khaibar enters service as Pakistan faces a growing mismatch with a much larger Indian Navy, now fielding dual carriers, modern destroyers and a sizable submarine force in the Arabian Sea. At the same time, Islamabad is doubling down on its maritime role in the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and Gwadar’s development, with sea-borne trade and energy flows central to its blue-economy ambitions and heavily underwritten by Chinese investment. In that context, a quartet of network-enabled, cruise-missile-armed Babur-class corvettes equipped with ADVENT and FLEETSTAR gives the Pakistan Navy a more coherent, digitally integrated surface force, better able to defend sea lines of communication and operate alongside both Turkish and Chinese-supplied combatants in a contested North Arabian Sea.