Navy worried as government fails to take call on torpedoes

The Narendra Modi government’s failure to take a decision on the purchase of 98 Black Shark torpedoes worries Indian Navy as the induction of the first Scorpene submarine is less than a year away.

The first submarine, Kalvari, is undergoing trials and slated to be inducted in September 2016. But still there is no decision on its main weapon, the Black Shark torpedo, as the supplier is a subsidiary of scam hit Finmeccanica group.

The panic-stricken Navy which asked the Defence Ministry to consider it as a special case has sought an opinion from the law ministry, which is also yet to respond even after six months.

“In the absence of a decision from the government, the Navy cannot start process of importing torpedoes,” Defence Ministry sources told Deccan Herald. The torpedoes are manufactured by a firm named Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei, which is a Finmeccanica group company.

Black Shark is a 63 mt long, fully stealth, wire guided and self-homing heavy-weight torpedo that can be integrated with any types of torpedo tubes.Following the VVIP-helicopter scam in which former executives of Finmeccanica and its UK-based helicopter-making subsidiary AgustaWestland were reportedly involved, defence ministry scrapped most of the deals with Finmeccanica group companies, though some cases are now being examined in a case-by-case basis.

As the Rs 18,798 crore project to construct six French-origin Scorpene submarines at Mazgaon Dock are running four years behind schedule, all the six submarines may be commissioned by the Navy by 2019. The first one was undocked on April 6 and has now gone for a harbour acceptance trial, which would be followed by sea trials in early 2016.

The defence ministry has also not taken any decision on the initiation of the tendering process and identify the shipyard for the P-75 I project to create a second assembly line for conventional diesel electric submarines. The plan to build six nuclear powered attack submarines (SSN) is only at a design stage.

In 1999, Indian Navy planned to acquire 24 diesel electric submarines over the next 30 years. The plan was tweaked twice later to incorporate nuclear-powered submarines and the deadlines were modified. But the targets set up even in the 2008-2022 indigenisation plan is way off the mark.