India’s most ambitious submarine project — the deal with the Franco-Spanish-make Scorpene submarines — will face a further delay, thereby making the boats obsolete by the time they arrive. The project’s original deadline of 2012 has now been extended to late 2016. This is according to defence minister A.K. Antony’s admission in the Parliament and revised projections by the Mazgaon Docks Limited in Mumbai, which is supposed to manufacture the submarines.
The Navy was desperately banking on swift induction of six French-origin conventional Scorpene submarines being built at the Mazgaon docks at Mumbai. The deal was signed in 2005 with France and the first submarine was to be inducted in December 2012. However, that didn’t happen due to prolonged delays. The first Scorpene submarine will now be inducted only in the second half of 2015, while the last one will be inducted by the end of 2018.
According to the deal, six submarines were to be manufactured by MDL at Mumbai after buying the technology from European nations. The project was worth `23,000 crore. “Bureaucratic delays and hurdles caused the project delay as the MDL failed to secure MoD approval on time,” said a former naval officer. The contract was a full transfer-of-technology pact. “The delay is slated to be extended as the Spanish firm Navantia left the project after its technical assistance pact with the French firm DCNS ended in March. So the part of the hull to be developed by them has been left incomplete,” said a naval source. The steel for the boats was to be delivered by the French division of Arcelor-Mittal.
Explaining how a promising submarine policy failed to be implemented, vice admiral (retired) A.K. Singh said, “We had envisaged a three-phase plan for submarine building and development. The first phase included building French-make Scorpene submarines under license at Mazgaon Docks Limited. This is already several years behind schedule. The second phase involved acquiring long-range submarines of Russian origin and the third was indigenously manufactured boats incorporating the best features of submarines of Russian and western origin. However, we haven’t reached the last two phases and the first stage itself is lagging behind.”
To make matters worse, there has been a prolonged delay in another crucial proposed project.
The Navy wanted to acquire six more conventional submarines equipped with the Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) technology that will enable the submarines to stay longer underwater, but delays have hit the process of issuing the Request for Proposal
(RFP) to global vendors. Defence minister A.K. Antony had recently stated that the proposal is now before the Cabinet Committee on Security.
(With inputs from Sridhar Kumaraswami)