Indian Navy moves to fast-track submarine acquisition plans
New Delhi: The Indian Navy has appointed a senior officer to oversee and fast-track all submarine acquisition plans, even as it grapples with a depleting underwater force and rising levels of submarines in the inventories of nations inimical to Indian interests.
Rear admiral MT Moraes has been appointed as the new assistant chief of naval staff (submarines), a position in naval headquarters that is being revived after a long time.
He assumed command on Friday.
He will be replaced as flag officer (submarines) at Visakhapatnam by rear admiral Srikant.
With a rapidly depleting fleet, the Navy has to move fast to get its Project-75 India (P-75I) rolling at the earliest. The Rs50,000 crore P-75I programme envisages acquisition of six new stealth submarines, equipped with both tube-launched missiles for land-attack capabilities as well as AIP (air-independent propulsion) for enhanced underwater endurance.
Even as its older fleet of German HDW and Russian Kilo-class submarines approaches redundancy levels, the ongoing Rs23,562-crore project to build six French Scorpene submarines at the Mazagon Docks is running late by three years.
These submarines will phase into service only in the period 2015 and 2020, by which time it is estimated the Navy will be operating with a fleet level of just five out of its existing 10 Russian Kilo-class and four German HDW submarines.
Consequently, even with all six Scorpenes operational, India will still fall short of the minimum requirement of 18 conventional submarines required to deter arch-enemies Pakistan and China.
India is also set to get the Russian Akula-II class nuclear-powered submarine, K-152 Nerpa, to be rechristened INS Chakra, on a 10-year lease by November-December.
The INS Chakra will be joined in service by the indigenously developed 6,000-tonne nuclear submarine, INS Arihant.
Earlier, navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma had announced India's nuclear weapon triad will be completed when INS Arihant goes on "deterrent patrols" next year.
The global tender or RFP (request for proposal) for the P-75I project will be floated towards end-2011 to vendors like Rosoboronexport (Russia), DCNS (France), HDW (Germany) and Navantia (Spain).
As of now, the plan is to directly import two submarines from a foreign collaborator, with the next three being built at Mazgaon Docks Ltd in Mumbai and the sixth at Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam under a transfer of technology programme.
