MoD sits on tender for new submarines The Defence Acquisition Council last year cleared the acceptance of necessity for this deal, which will lapse in August.

                                          The current lot of Scorpene submarines are being built in Mumbai.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has delayed the order for six additional (second lot) submarines to be bought for the Indian Navy. The decision comes at a time when the submarine fleet is getting depleted. The Defence Acquisition Council last year cleared the acceptance of necessity (AoN) for this Rs 50,000 cr deal, which will lapse in August, before which the tender has to be floated. The contract is for six submarines under Project 75 (I), which are a follow-on of the first six submarines currently being built in the Mumbai-based Mazagon Docks Limited (MDL) by French company DCNS.

All six submarines under the P-75 (I) contract are supposed to have the AIP (air independent propulsion) system onboard. The AIP is a technology which allows a conventional diesel submarine to operate without the need to surface and helps it to remain submerged for a longer period of time.

Four global vendors are in the fray: Navantia of Spain, Rosoboronexport of Russia, DCNS of France and HDW of Germany. India has been operating Kilo-class submarines of Russian origin and German HDWs and has them in its inventory. The Spanish and Russian submarines do not have the AIP system onboard, which is why, according to sources, Russia is trying to have this clause removed from the tender requirements.

Retired Vice Admiral B.S. Randhawa told this newspaper, "Two lines of different designs of submarines were supposed to run concurrently and then an evolutionary design of our own, but there has been a delay and this will affect force levels which are coming down. As AIP only helps in underwater patrols, its efficiency depends on the distance from the operating base and also on the expending stores of a submarine has to be taken into account as the storage capacity is very limited."

Already grappling with a shortage of submarines, the Indian Navy is currently left with just 14 submarines comprising 10 Kilo-class and four 209-German HDWs, out of which one Kilo-class (INS Sindhurakshak) has left for Russia for overhaul and modernisation.

Under the original six-submarine order, called Project-75 (worth Rs 18,798 cr), French firm DCNS is building the Scorpene at MDL. The project is already facing time and cost overruns. The order was signed in October 2005. The first submarine would be delivered in June 2015 and the last one in the second half of 2018, the Defence Minister said in Parliament last year. The government also sanctioned an additional amount of Rs 4,764.00 cr for the project.

Delay in the scheduled delivery was due to initial teething problems, absorption of technology, augmentation of MDL infrastructure, etc., Parliament was informed.

For P-75 (I), along with MDL, there will be participation from the Vishakhapatnam-based Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), which will have a private Indian partnership. Hindustan Shipyard Limited was taken over by the MoD in 2009 to build the indigenous Arihant-class nuclear submarines. L&T is already collaborating with the navy, DRDO and HSL in manufacturing the indigenous nuclear submarines. Out of the six, two will be bought from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), three will be made in MDL and one at HSL.