Looking Back to Look Ahead

Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab

Moscow: Faced with interminable delays, growing competition and a supposedly ‘fickle’ customer, Rosoboronexport is making, what its director general Alexander Mikheev calls, an unprecedented offer to India for its submarine programme P-75I.

Director, FSMTC Dmitry Shugaev (L) with director general, Rosoboronexport, Alexander Mikheev

“We have had fruitful cooperation with India over a number of programmes, including submarines. We also have years of experience working with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and have been working with it on the development of its Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system. We are making an offer to the Indian government to jointly develop a submarine which is entirely Indian in concept and design. It will be a new submarine and not something that is available in the market today. We hope that our offer will be accepted as a government to government programme and not as part of a global tender,” Mikheev told a group of Indian journalists on the side-lines of the Army 2018 exhibition.

The special press interaction was held in the historic President hotel of the Soviet era. Huge, ostentatious and reflective of government-style maintenance, President hotel, one among the several government-owned hotels in Russia, is run directly by the President’s office and had full security detailing including scrutinising the passports of the visitors right at the entry gate which had an access control system in place. The venue of the press meet reflected the importance of the event. And from Russian perspective, it was a