Mumbai, August 16: In another date with the Navy after spending time on board aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will commission the largest-ever warship built in India till now, the 6,800-tonne destroyer INS Kolkata, at Mumbai on Saturday.
The entire programme to build INS Kolkata and two follow-on destroyers (INS Kochi and INS Chennai), being undertaken at the Mazagon Docks under the Rs 11,662 crore Project-15A, is running several years behind schedule. Once the construction of these three destroyers was over, the plan was to launch Project-15B to build four guided missile stealth destroyers.
Both INS Kolkata and INS Kamorta are part of the 44 warships currently on order in Indian shipyards at a cost of over Rs 2 lakh crore, as part of the endeavour to steadily build a three-dimensional blue-water Navy capable of taking care of India's huge strategic interests in the region stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Malacca Strait.
The largest warship being indigenously built, of course, is the 40,000-tonne aircraft carrier INS Vikrant at the Cochin Shipyard. The Modi government recently cleared the allocation of Rs 19,000 crore to complete its construction, which had derailed due to paucity of funds, as was first reported by TOI.
Around 75% of the carrier's basic structure, including the hull and deck, has been completed till now at a cost of around Rs 3,500 crore. Now, the superstructure, the upper decks, the cabling, sensors, weapons and the like will be integrated on INS Vikrant, which will be commissioned only in 2018 as per the re-revised timeframe.
Though the IAC project was approved in January 2003, the actual construction of the huge warship began only in 2006. After the carrier's keel was laid in 2009, it was "launched" into water in August last year.
Much like aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, which was dedicated to the nation by Modi in June, INS Kolkata is also somewhat naked in the absence of long-range surface-to-air missile (LR-SAM) systems to tackle enemy aircraft, drones and missiles.
Sanctioned in 2005 at a cost of Rs 2,606 crore to arm major Indian warships, the joint DRDO-Israeli Aerospace Industries development project is yet to deliver the requisite LR-SAMs with an interception range of 70-km.
Moreover, INS Kolkata is also bereft of critical advanced light towed array sonars (ALTAS), which tail behind warships to detect and track enemy submarines on the prowl. It has hull-mounted sonars, towed array ones provide better detection capabilities.
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