INDIA'S NUCLEAR SHARKS

A long-delayed project nears CCS clearance even as India’s submarine force gets long in the tooth. Why the N-powered attack submarine project has taken so long

- SANDEEP UNNITHAN

The PowerPoint presentation by navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh at the combined commanders’ conference in Kevadia, Gujarat, on March 6 this year had been some months in the making. For nearly 18 months now, the proposal to indigenously build six nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) for Rs 96,000 crore had been stuck with the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) as senior government officials questioned the need for the platforms during an economic crisis. The navy chief pressed Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the urgency of the programme to build the SSNs, each displacing around 6,000 tonnes and costing around Rs 16,000 crore, as key to solving the crisis in India’s underseas combatant arm. The bulk of India’s conventional submarine fleet, acquired in the 1980s, are approaching the end of their 30-year service lives. Bureaucratic delays have hit their replacements.

The underseas arm is shrinking at a time when India’s principal adversary, China, has initiated the largest post Cold War naval expansion. The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) navy is now the world’s largest in a number of warships, and will continue to grow over the next decade, not only adding new aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and surface ships but also expanding its reach through distant deployments in the Indian Ocean region.