Indian Navy gets high-tech floating dock from L&T

In a bid to enhance the technical repair infrastructure for ships based in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Indian Navy on Tuesday gets high-tech Floating Dock (FDN-2), which specifically designed and built by Larsen and Toubro for the Indian Navy at the company’s greenfield shipyard at Kattupalli in Tamil Nadu near Chennai.
 
The Floating Dock was formally lowered into the waters of the Bay of Bengal. L&T was mandated by the Ministry of Defence in May 2015 to design and build the FDN-2 for an order value of Rs. 468 Crores.
 
The Floating Dock will be delivered at Port Blair. On completion of its launch at Kattupalli, FDN-2 would be put through a series of harbour trials before delivery to the Navy.
 
Once operationalised, it would enhance the technical repair infrastructure of the Navy for ships based in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as well as for visiting Naval ships.

 The Floating Docks 185m long and 40m wide and is designed for docking Indian Naval ships and submarines of up to 8000 T displacement with draughts of up to 7 m, during both day and night.
 
Simultaneous docking of multiple ships and off-center docking options are also feasible.
 
The dock, which conforms to internationally accepted norms, incorporates a fully automated ballast control system, State-of- the-art technology in its equipment.

 L&T has also been mandated by the Coast Guard to design and build seven Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs). Two of these OPVs are to be launched in the second half of this financial year, on schedule.