Rain of Deterrence

Prasun K. Sengupta

As part of her planned transition from being a declared nuclear weapons state with ‘minimum credible deterrence’ to acquiring ‘credible minimum deterrence’ status, India is presently undertaking the construction of a mammoth multi-phase shore-based naval base that will be the permanent home for the Indian Navy’s (IN’s) planned fleets of six nuclear-powered ballistic missile-carrying submarines (SSBN) and six nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSN)—dubbed as the most survivable of India’s nuclear triad.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing SSBN-80’s crew in November 2018

Under a contract inked in January 2008, Russia has been providing technical expertise to the IN for building this naval base at a cost of almost USD2 billion to build, which will include twin underwater submarine tunnel entrances leading to separate berths for accommodating both SSBNs and SSNs, a hardened underground tunnel for storing nuclear warheads and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), plus a command-and-control centre and a related communications station.

Civil engineering work on Phase-1 of the Naval Alternate Operational Base (NAOB), being built under the IN’s ‘Project Varsha’, commenced in 2016 near Atchutapuram, 50km south of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. After soil testing, heavy blasting was undertaken to construct various structures by deploying heavy earth-moving equipment. Boundary wall construction was completed by 2018. Land acquisition process for the NAOB was launched in 2005. In the first phase, nearly 4,500 acres, both private and government land, was acquired in Rambilli, Rajala Agraharam, Marripalem and Vakapadu. Four villages—Velpugondupulam, Revuvathada, Devallapalem and Pisinigottupalem—were totally displaced, following which houses were shifted to a temporary rehabilitation colony. Phase-1, costing Rs 30,000 crore, will be completed by 2022.

Underwater Communications

Earlier, in March 2012 the construction began for an extremely low-frequency (ELF) communications station near the village of Vijaya Narayanam, about 23km north of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) in Tamil Nadu. It is co-located with the IN’s existing Very Low-Frequency (VLF) communications station (INS Kattabomman), which transmits at 18.2kHz and was supplied by the US-based Continental Electronics Corp (CEC).

It may be recalled that CEC was selected as the prime foreign industrial subcontractor by Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to provide its experience and expertise for the design and manufacture of the VLF communications station to support the India Navy Ships (INS) project. The station was commissioned in 2014 after CEC had supplied to VLF transmission equipment for underwater communications, including the Type 124 VLF solid-state transmitter capable of delivering 6MVA (30 SSPAs). This is today the highest power solid-state t