Rajnath Singh with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius
To strengthen the Indo-German military bonds, an MoU to cooperate in submarine production was inked between the defence shipyard MDL (Mazagon Dock) and German company ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), as a precursor to joining a bid for the approx. Rs 42,000 crore project to build six diesel-electric submarines for the Navy.
The MoU was signed in the presence of visiting Defence minister of Germany Borish Pistorius. The MoU is known to be “non-binding and non-financial” in nature. On Tuesday, the German defence minister said that TKMS was in a “good place in the race” for the submarine-development program that could become a “flagship project” in India-Germany defence relations.
Taking notes from the MoU, TKMS is set to engage in the engineering and design aspects of the submarines as well as the consultancy support for this joint venture, whereas Mazagon Dock will be responsible for constructing and delivering the submarines.
Two other foreign contenders ‘Navantia’ and South Korea-based company ‘Daewoo’ are participating in the competition for ‘Project-75 India’ project, along with other contending companies. The Indian defense ministry first granted “acceptance for necessity” to the project in November 2007. The P-751 was supposed to be the initial project under the “strategic partnership” policy introduced in May 2017 but has faced a lot of delays.
Under the global tender finally issued in July 2021, MLD or the private Larsen & Toubro shipyard will be selected to build the six stealth conventional submarines with foreign collaboration. These submarines will be equipped with both land-attack cruise missiles and air-independent propulsion (AIP), which enhances the underwater endurance of diesel-electric submarines.
The deadline for submitting commercial-technical bids is now August 1. It is pertinent to note that French and Russian companies are no longer in the competition as they do not have submarines with operational AIP, which extends the underwater endurance of diesel-electric submarines
Once signed, the contract will take approximately ten years for the first submarine of this kind to be rolled out. Presently, the Navy’s conventional underwater fleet is rather thin. It consists of just six old Russian Kilo-class submarines and four German HDW submarines, in addition to the six new French-origin Scorpene submarines constructed under Project-75 at MDL.
(With Input Feeds)
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