The New Scorpene Class-INS KALVARI is Reborn

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?