Capt. Jawahar Bhagwat PhD (retd)

Our objective in the ‘Project for Series Construction of Submarines for the Indian Navy and Acquisition of National Competence in Submarine Building’ or the ’30-year submarine building plan’ was to beat the control regimes, identify commercial technologies from wherever suitable, utilise the considerable engineering resources of the country to augment its system integration and software teams alongside the navy’s software groups, pay for process technologies, import these where absolutely necessary; and once and for all put everything together to become a genuine submarine building nation’

— Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former Chief of Naval Staff

Presently the Indian Navy is operating the Kilo class (Sindhughosh) submarines, the Type 209 (Shishumar) class and the Scorpene class submarines in the conventional domain. In addition, it operates the nuclear ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant (SSBN) and the nuclear attack submarine INS Chakra (SSN) on lease from Russia.

On 29 December 2019, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported that a parliamentary panel was informed that in order to strengthen its underwater fleet, the Indian Navy plans to build 24 submarines, including six nuclear attack submarines (SSNs). The navy also informed the panel that Medium Refit Life Certification (MRLC) of the Kilo class submarine INS Sindhuraj has been held up since the Russian side has not been able to submit bank guarantees and integrity pact due to sanctions imposed by the United States (US).

In its report to the parliamentary panel tabled in December 2019, the navy stated that ‘there are presently 15 conventional submarines and two nuclear submarines in its fleet. The Indian Navy has two nuclear submarines INS Arihant and INS Chakra’, leased from Russia. The report highlighted that the ‘majority of the conventional submarines are over 25 years old. Thirteen submarines are between 17 and 32 years’. More than two decades earlier on 24 March 1998, the then CNS Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat raised the issue in the first meeting with the defence minister of the newly-formed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of ‘a pending proposal of the navy which sought a ‘Statement of Intent’ for a 30-year submarine building plan’ from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). In the book, Betrayal of the Defence Force, Admiral Bhagwat wrote that, ‘The ministry is supposed to have an institutional memory. However, while the previous prime minister, defence minister, finance and home ministers have endorsed the idea and concurred with it in principle, the ministry of defence (MoD) was unable to grasp why we needed such a statement of policy approval. It implied a financial commitment in principle that would be carried from one five-year plan to another.’ (Chapter, 30 Years Submarine Building Plan).

The Admiral invited the attention of the government to the gravity of the decreasing submarine force level observing that ‘Now we had an approved force level of 24 submarines. We had reached the figure of 19 submarines at a point of time. After that, in the last four years (1994-98) we had begun to decommission the first batch of our submarines and block obsolescence was staring in the navy’s face. By the year 2010, we would have an unacceptably low figure for frontline deployment. The import of two submarines (contracts for INS Sindhuraksak commissioned in 1998  and the first missile capable submarine INS Sindhushastra commissioned in 2000 were signed in 1997) and completely knocked down/ semi-knocked down assembly of two or more boats was not how we could plan a submarine force for a maritime nation astride the Indian Ocean. This approach could never lead us to bec