The ships has a length of 130.5 meter, a width of 14.6 meter, a draught of 6.2 meters. The ship has 2 Rolls-royce Olympus gasturbines of each 37.941kW and two Rolls Royce Tyne gasturbines of each 7.382kW. The maximum speed is 20 knots. The crew consists of 200 sailors and officers.

Origin
Since the beginning 80ths the The Netherlands decided to purchase 12 new standard frigates. Only 8 have been bought, 2 have been sold the Greece and 2 are special designed S-frigates for Air Defence. These 2 frigates became later (F812 and F813) air defence frigates. That's why the air defence frigates are a lot of similar with the S-frigates. In contrast with the S-frigates the Air defence frigates don't have a helicopter deck and a Oto Melara canon. As a replacement the air defence frigates are having a standard missile air defence system with a range of 40Km.

Missions
The ships have been used during the Gulf war in 1991. The ship was also part of NATO Standing Naval Force Mediterranean.

Future
The 2 Dutch air defence frigates including conventional weapons have been sold to Chili on 29 march 2004. Van Heemskerck will be assigned to the Chili Navy in december 2005. The other ship Hr.Ms. Witte de With in july 2006. Together with the Air defence frigates Chili has also bought 2 Multi-purpose frigates from the Royal Netherlands Navy.

Armament
The ships were having in Dutch service:

-NATO Sea Sparrow against targets on short distance
-Harpoon weapon systems against surface targets
-Systems for radar jamming, torpedoweaponsystem against submarines
-Goalkeeper rapid fire canon against air targets on very close distance
- 2x 20mm Oerlikon.