The recent commissioning of the INS Satpura, the second of the indigenously constructed guided missile strength frigates, effectively completes two-thirds of Project 17 — India’s ambitious programme to design and construct its own stealth frigates. Following the expected commissioning of the INS Sahyadri sometime in 2012, Mazagaon Dock Limited (MDL) will commence work on the construction of four even more advanced “Project 17 A” frigates. The navy’s strategy to put together the components of what would eventually be three naval battle groups centred around aircraft carriers is far reaching. Accordingly, the Navy plans to commission the following additional combat ships during the next eight years: two aircraft carriers (of approximately 40,000 tonnes each), four guided missile destroyers (Project 15A), three stealth frigates (currently under construction in Russia), six Scorpene submarines, three Arihant class nuclear-powered submarines and the Project 28 corvettes specially designed for anti-submarine warfare. The induction of force-multipliers such as the P-8i surveillance and early warning aircraft would make the Indian Navy a truly potent force, not just numerically but also in power projection capability by 2020!
The navy evidently takes its role as the guarantor of India’s maritime interests seriously. It needs to be credited with being steadfast in sticking to an indigenisation programme formulated in the 1960s and being involved in the design and development of warships from the conception stage itself. Of the three services, the navy’s interactive work with the private sector is the most impressive and can only increase from here on as the private sector’s confidence to design and execute projects increases with every success.
These successes, impressive as they are, cannot obscure the tardiness in the pace of construction and delivery by Indian shipyards, as admitted recently by Defence Minister A K Antony. Indian shipyards on average take twice as long to deliver a standard combat vessel compared to European shipyards. The experience gained from the project to indigenously construct the HDW submarines under licence at MDL in the 1990s was frittered away owing to non-availability of future orders. As a result, the Scorpene submarines are taking a lot longer to be commissioned, with the delivery date of the first submarine already pushed back two years to 2014-15! India continues to rely on foreign shipyards for vessels that could easily be manufactured domestically, paying a lot more in the process than it ideally should.
It is said that the three stages in warship design are to get it to “float”, “move” and “fight”. Indian shipyards have established competence in the first stage, but have a long way to go in the other two, leading to an unacceptably high level of import dependence in critical components. The way forward would essentially involve three steps: greater research and development spending by public and private sector units to develop indigenous competence, a comprehensive retooling of defence shipyards to enhance productivity and the involvement of private shipyards in ship building, starting with smaller ships and leading to more challenging future assignments.