Israel's Navy reports getting the second of two new landing craft at Haifa Naval Base. The INS Komemiyut landing craft was escorted into Israel's territorial waters by other Navy vessels earlier today. The IDF has said that the new vessels will “act as a central pillar in adapting the Israeli Navy to the modern and multi-arena battlefield.”
The INS Komemiyut, the Navy's second landing craft, was built in the US following last year's arrival of the INS Nahshon, the first landing craft for the Israeli Navy.
The ship, with a weight of 2,500 tons and measuring around 95 meters long and 20 meters wide, travelled a long distance from the Pascagoula shipyard in Mississippi to Israel.
The main purpose of landing craft is to transport troops and equipment across the sea and unload them on the shore for amphibious attacks. The ships were purchased with money from American military aid to Israel.
The Israeli Navy operated these vessels from 1948 to 1993, when the remaining old landing crafts were retired, the military believed newer models were unnecessary at the time. However along with various escalations in tensions between its neighbouring countries, the Israeli Navy started acquiring new landing crafts around five years ago.
The new ship arrivals are said to be of strategic significance to the state of Israel in its fight to defend itself. With the landing craft's entry into Israel’s territorial waters, it was escorted by a fleet of other Navy ships, with one vessel symbolically leaving the formation as a salute to the fallen soldiers of the current ongoing "Swords of Iron" war, the military said.
