From Foxtrot To Scorpene, INS Kalvari is Reborn
(Courtesy The quint )
In anticipation of the Golden jubilee celebrations
of the Indian denizens of the deep, my article posted on 16 Feb, interalia,
referred to the Scorpene class submarine. Now that her trials have been
successfully concluded, the PM is scheduled to commission the first of the
Kalvari class submarine. The golden jubilee of the submarine arm was celebrated
at Vishakhapatnam with much fanfare and joy on 08 Dec when the President
presented the colours to the submarine arm.
As is the
tradition, Kalvari and her sister ships will be reborn. S50 is the pennant
number of Kalvari. It so happened that the golden jubilee preceded it by six
days. Consequently during the life of this submarine her commissioning date cannot
be easily forgotten. These are rare coincidences that occur in history.
The original
Kalvari was a Foxtrot class submarine of the former Soviet union. Here too
there is a tale to tell. Given the long acquisition process that is endemic to
decision making structures in India, we had approached the UK in early 1960s to
provide us our first submarine. Our consanguineous neighbour on the West had
beaten us to it, due to her close association with the USA. PNS Ghazi their
first submarine, albeit second hand, was operational by 1963. She was capable
of long deployment having gone around the cape of good hope for an upgrade to Turkey
in 1968. Perhaps that was the main reason for deploying her off Vishakhapatnam
during the 1971 war. That she sank just outside Vizag is now part of our
maritime history.
A hand-
picked Indian submarine crew was deputed to the UK in 1964 , in anticipation of
procuring the British Oberon class submarine. Mr YB Chavan the then RM was
negotiating with USA and UK. The Americans flatly refused to provide naval
hardware to India. The British, due to down scaling of their own Navy were
unable to provide soft loans for the Oberon class. It was at this stage that the
Soviet Union stepped in to rescue us and the rest is history. Kalvari was the
first of eight Foxtrot class submarines to be commissioned into Indian naval
service in Dec 1967.
Those who
proudly manned these Soviet built sturdy machines often spoke of the near
perfect safety standards of the boat through inbuilt redundancies that kept her
afloat during many an emergency. In all the Foxtrot submarines built and
operated by first the Soviets, later the Russians and six international
customers only one was lost to fire and explosion.
Having
learnt to operate the Foxtrots under combat conditions too, our submariners graduated
to the German SSK and the Russian EKM or Kilo class submarines with great ease.
The new
Kalveri has been built by the Mazagaon docks at Mumbai under contract from DCNS
of France. Although the yard had gathered invaluable experience from the Germans
when two submarines of German origin (SSK) were built, the entire trained
manpower was lost due to the termination of the project caused by alleged
corruption in the deal.
The French
stepped in two decades later but the project suffered inordinate delays due to
contractual discrepancies. Consequently the force levels of operational
submarines had to face depletion. Kalvari commenced her trials under a cloud
when it was alleged that confidential parameters of her design were leaked due
to competing commercial interests .Reportedly,
investigations have revealed that vital
parameters have not been compromised.
Given this
background, commissioning of Kalvari is a long awaited event that should bring relief
to this professional arm of the navy.
But that is just one part of the story. As early as in 1999, the navy had
submitted a submarine build programme that needed a second line of production
to sustain the existing force levels as also to maintain a credible operational
profile of the conventional force. That plan has languished for almost two
decades. Needless to say that long gestation periods for decision making and
time line of manufacturing in India can
only lead to history repeating itself. Deja vu?
