India’s Warship...

The private shipyards resort to buying the designs from foreign collaborators and depend upon the Indian Navy for providing design of warships on order.

Warship building in India also suffers from weaknesses like requirement of large financial resources, gross deficiencies in meeting economy of scale, insufficient levels of local industry support in ancillaries, lack of compatible indigenous propulsion and power generation systems, designing and capacity limitations, and long gestation periods between design and construction; leading to design and equipment changes and finally inability of research and development (R&D) and supply of modern weapon systems by the industry.

A modern warship operates in a multithreat 3D environment requiring a multimission and multi-role capability. The requirement to meet threats arising from subsurface, surface, air and space, dictate a network-centric approach centred on data fusion and presentation for selection of effective weapons from different ships to attack the threat. This puts a great demand upon the type of sensors with differing technologies required, for example, an antisubmarine warfare sensor package needs multi-frequency active and passive sonar covering long ranges to meet threats from submarines as well as mines, whereas the gunnery sensors need 3D multi-function radar, IFF and radars for littoral warfare to meet surface, air and anti-anti-ship cruise missile threats. These have to be coupled with comprehensive electronic warfare/ electronic counter-countermeasures (eW/ eCCM) systems, navigation radars with global positioning system (GPS), automatic identification systems, echo sounder, speed log, communication system with multi- channel, multi-mode suite, etc for meeting needs of warships operating in conjunction with other ships, naval aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). All these have to be finally integrated in the computer aided information organisation/command management system (CAIO/CMS) for seamless handling of data for information fusion and decision capability. The sensor suite is to be supported finally by the weapon package be it guns in dual role, missiles for antiair and anti-surface/land attack, torpedo systems, weapons for integral air capability and decoy dispensers.

Naval weapons are complex in design due to the corrosive sea environment in which they have to operate, severe space and weight restrictions, and problems of stabilisation as the ship rolls, pitches and yaws. Further, as with all weapons, they cannot be procured just by paying the currency required by the manufacturers. The pricing of weapons is based upon the need of the country, its relations with the producing country, its position in the world at large and other considerations like, foreign policy issues, type of technology, availability of similar systems for sale in other countries, etc. In case of India, it has been the experience that the weapon system it desires is not available for purchase, the alternate offered is exorbitantly priced and what is affordable is invariably not required by India. The ideal solution is local availability of weapon systems, which will ensure maintainability, timely upgrades and modularity for warship design. The indigenous effort has still not matured to provide viable weapon system or even subsystem solution within the required time frames and the budgeted costs. economic viability, arms export policy and non-availability of technological prowess, appear to be the main reasons. Thus, India is left with no alternative but to import and also prolong use of existing armament by process of life extension, constrained with improper/insufficient spares, inadequate documentation and testing methods. Weapons thus continue to be deployed well beyond their useful life without ascertaining if or at all, or to what extent they meet the designed parameters.

Production of BrahMos missile system; TAL torpedo by the Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL); electronic warfare (eW) systems and Sonars by the Bharat electronics Limited (BeL); Ak630 and miscellaneous ammunition by Ordnance Factory Board (OFB); super rapid gun mount by the Bharat Heavy electricals Limited (BHeL); Russian rocket system (RBU) and transportable target launchers by Larsen and Toubro (L&T), etc are heartening. However, the indigenous effort would have been much more visible had protracted delays not taken place in development of other weapon systems like surface-to-air missiles and heavyweight torpedoes. The GT/ diesel propulsion and power generation packages continue to be procured from abroad for major ships. However, for some corvettes, kirloskar Oils and engines Limited (kOeL) have commenced supplying engines and with Walchandnagar Industries working in collaboration with DCNS France, more import substitution will follow. Other critical technologies in stealth, smart materials, ab initio weapon system design, etc continue to elude the warship building effort in India.

Taking a holistic view of indigenisation, the kelkar Committee had rightly brought out that Òthere is an urgent need to review the whole concept of indigenisation and self-reliance, and it is time to go beyond the idea of looking at indigenisation purely as import substitution of components, subassemblies, etc within the country from raw materials. Today indigenisation as a concept will need to involve capability enhancement and development, increasing know-why, design and system integration, rather than having numerical targets. Further taking cognisance of the inadequacies in the Indian shipbuilding in the defence and commercial sector, the National Manufacturing Council, in its report, made the following recommendations to the Prime Minister’s Office in 2009, for developing Indian shipbuilding industry: ● Prepare, on an urgent basis, a comprehensive plan to enhance domestic shipbuilding capabilities and building large new shipyards. ● Adopt a mission mode approach for the purpose.

● A continuing mechanism be evolved to synergise the efforts of the naval authorities under the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Shipping for meeting long-term requirements of the country. In conclusion, it suffices to say that only a mission mode holistic approach with active participation of the private shipyards and industry on a private-public partnership (PPP) model would impart the impetus that Indian warship building critically needs. In the words of President George Washington, Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honourable and glorious.