Creators Of Our Destroyers – INS Mormugao, commissioned yesterday, shows both the progress & weakness in indigenous warship building

Source: The post is based on the article “Creators Of Our Destroyers – INS Mormugao, commissioned yesterday, shows both the progress & weakness in indigenous warship building” published in The Times of India on 19^th November 2022.

Syllabus: GS – 3 – Various Security forces and agencies and their mandate.

Relevance: About India’s shipbuilding industry.

News: INS Mormugao, the Indian navy’s latest destroyer of the Project 15B class, has been commissioned recently.

About the Project-15 (P15) family of ships

The Project-15 (P15) class started with INS Delhi. It is India’s first home-built destroyer. It was commissioned in November 1997 and set a new benchmark.

Apart from three ships of the P15 class, there have been three of the P15A named the Kolkata class. Visakhapatnam was the lead ship of the P15B class followed by Mormugao.

These ships now complete most of their trials and even weapon firings before commissioning so that they are ready to go in harm’s way sooner.

What are the weaknesses associated with India’s shipbuilding industry?

1) INS Mormugao has taken the shortest build time of about seven years due to integrated shipbuilding, while the INS Delhi took over 10 years. But, a drop of build time from 10-plus years to about 6-7 years over a 35-year build period, is by itself not impressive.

2) There are some major commonalities between all three sub-classes of the P15, so efficiencies should have been better.

What are the improvements in India’s shipbuilding industry?

There have been generational improvements in each sub-class. Both in terms of combat capabilities, as well as indigenous content. “Indianisation” percentages have improved in the “float and fight” components when compared to the P15s.

For example, a) The steel for the hull and superstructure is now made in India; b) More of the electronic components for electronic warfare, communications and radars are now either Indian-origin or licence-built in larger numbers with knowledge accretion from Indian partner firms in the public and private sectors, c) Weapons and their launchers are collaborative like the accurate and lethal Brahmos, d) The main and secondary guns as well as anti-submarine ordnance which is now more “Indian” than any time earlier, e) There are other design improvements across evolutionary processes that benefit stability, damage control, sea-keeping and stealth through more automation and improved systems needing fewer operators.

WhCreators Of Our Destroyers – INS Mormugao, commissioned yesterday, shows both the progress & weakness in indigenous warship buildingeeds improvement in India’s shipbuilding industry?

In the “move” area or propulsion, Indian ships reflect big lacunae. For example, frigates and destroyers still require imported gas turbines. India does not have any indigenous options even under imported transfer of technology neither in aero nor in marine gas turbines. This has to be improved.

Given the turmoil in Russia and Ukraine, ships that depend on hardware from these two countries could face problems that need to be addressed with ‘atmanirbharta’.