Can you give an overview of the Scorpene programme at MDL? Is the Naval Group team still present at MDL?

The Scorpene programme is progressing very well. The year 2019 witnessed the commissioning of the second Scorpene submarine Khanderi by the defence minister and the launch of the fourth submarine named Vela by Veena Kumar, wife of defence secretary Ajay Kumar.

The last two submarines — INS Vagir and INS Vagsheer — are in advanced stages of manufacturing on the assembly line at MDL and are scheduled to be launched in succession. With four submarines already launched, two undergoing sea trials and two commissioned, we are happy to say that the cooperation and transfer of technology with MDL has been a success.

Given that the navy has said that it will continue to pursue the P-75I programme under strategic partnership model and not place follow-on orders for Scorpene, will Naval Group participate in the programme? Which platform will you offer?

We are honoured to have received and responded to the expression of interest (EOI) of P-75I for the foreign OEMs. Having already achieved very high level of indigenisation during P75 project and the expertise derived from designing and constructing both latest generation of conventional and nuclear submarine of different size and tonnage, we are ready to propose a fully-compliant solution for Indian Navy.

Given the strategic partnership and the mutual working experience we have developed with Indian industries and shipyards, we would definitely be happy to propose a design, fully compliant with the new specifications.

Are you still in touch with the DRDO for its Air Independent Propulsion system?

We are closely working with DRDO to integrate the indigenous AIP in the Indian Scor