A Defiant-class escort given to Benjamin Sisko in 2375 and renamed Defiant to replace the ship lost in battle.
The USS Sao Paulo was a Defiant-class escort that entered service late in the Dominion War. It shared the compact, heavily armed design of the original Defiant, a ship built to fight the Borg and later the Dominion.
After the original Defiant was destroyed by a Breen energy weapon in The Changing Face of Evil, Starfleet assigned the Sao Paulo to Captain Benjamin Sisko in The Dogs of War. Starfleet granted special permission for the ship to be renamed Defiant, and the crew watched a new dedication plaque replace the old one.
Under its new name, the ship carried Sisko's crew into the final campaign of the war. In What You Leave Behind it fought in the allied assault on Cardassia that ended the Dominion War, alongside Federation, Klingon and Romulan forces.