Kolkata's Garden Reach Shipbuilder to launch high-tech stealth warship next week

Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers, a state-owned shipyard, will launch the first of three stealth frigates for the Indian Navy on Monday (December 14).

The three ships belong to the Project 17A class of frigates; The Mazagon Docks Limited in Mumbai is building four ships of the same class.

The Narendra Modi government had cleared the construction of the seven warships in February 2015 with an estimated budgetary allocation of Rs 50,000 crore. Last year, Mazagon Docks launched the first ship of the Project 17A class, to be called the INS Nilgiri.

CMD of GRSE retired rear-admiral V.K. Saxena gave details of the project in an interview to The Times of India earlier this week.

“The order for the three stealth frigates at a cost of nearly Rs 19,289 crore is the biggest ever for GRSE. The ships… have a displacement of 6,670 tonnes each. They will have the most advanced, state-of-the-art sensors and armaments on board. The ships will also have advanced stealth features. These frigates are among the best in the world and the whole country and West Bengal as well as Kolkata should be proud of this achievement."

The Project 17A class frigates will be the most advanced class of major surface warship in the Indian Navy in a decade's time. Though the design of the Project 17A class is derived from the preceding Shivalik class frigate, the former uses more features to reduce its chance of radar detection. The Project 17A uses a 'flush deck' layout in which the deck has a uniform, continuous layout from bow to stern, which reduces its radar cross-section.

The Project 17A class frigates are being built using a 'modular' technique in which different parts of the ship are built separately and welded together. Modular construction allows for both increased pace of construction of multiple ships and also ease of incorporating upgrades.

The Project 17A will have an armament similar to the Kolkata class destroyers, including BrahMos supersonic surface-to-surface missiles to attack ships and shore targets and the Indo-Israeli Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles. While the Project 17A will have the same EL/M-2248 radar to acquire targets for the Barak-8 missiles as the Kolkata class has, it will also have an advanced secondary radar.

There has been speculation the Project 17A will have the LTR-25 'Lanza' radar from Spanish company Indra. The LTR-25 has a range in excess of 400km and can detect a large number of aerial targets, including ballistic missiles.

The Project 17A will also have torpedoes and rockets to hit submarines and rapid-fire guns to destroy anti-ship missiles as well as a heavy main gun to engage ships and coastal target.