Import-Dependence For Arms Impacting Indian Forces' Combat-Readiness

MDL, a public sector shipbuilding yard, deserves praise for having skilfully built and steadily delivered high quality warships and submarines to the IN for the past half-century. At the same time there is no denying the fact that every MDL project has been dogged by huge time delays (Kolkata took 11 years to build) and embarrassing cost overruns, which have had an adverse impact on the navy's force levels and fiscal planning. Warship building is supported by a network of dedicated ancillary industries which produce most of the systems required for 'domestic and hotel services' on board warships. It is their contribution, added to the steel hull of the ship, welded in MDL, which appears to underpin inflated claims of indigenous content (perhaps by weight or volume) made for all our warships - including the Kolkata.

However, we need to squarely face the fact that the ability of Indian built warships 'to move, to see and to fight' comes almost exclusively from high-technology systems imported from abroad. A media scan shows that the Kolkata's gas-turbine engines, generators, propellers and shafting, gear-box, gun systems, the surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, and radars are all imported. Most systems claimed as 'indigenous' have been assembled under licence - with minimal value-addition by Indian scientists. Thus, if the value of imported content is reckoned, it may come to as much as 70-80 percent of the ship's cost.

Here it is appropriate to cite two outstanding success stories related to the DRDO. One emanates from its Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory which has provided a state-of-the-art 'Humsa' sonar, as well as other anti-submarine warfare devices for the Kolkata. The provenance of Humsa sonar goes to 1975 when a brilliant naval electronic engineer, Lieutenant Arogyaswamy Paul Raj, led a NPOL team to develop an advanced panoramic sonar; then at the cutting edge of technology. Since then, the IN and NPOL have worked in close collaboration to successfully develop a series of ASW systems that equip our front-line ships.

READ MORE: Modi Government To Give Greater Push To Look East Policy: Sushma and India's First Indigenous Anti-Submarine Warship Commissioned