Igorr,

What in the world are those white circles on the radome for - around 2:06 i think? Anybody?

CM.

Could be linked to radar performance/testing. I have heard references to anti-static paint/material which is applied like this to radomes - in both civil and mil craft ( Since the radome 'shell' itself can build up static)

If thats what these circles are - then they have just not been painted over yet.

I can not get Igorr's youtube link to run despite best efforts.

Magnify the image and take a look see.

If the circles are silver /metallic colored then they are for lightening protection. Most radomes have them barring some of the really older ones.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Viraat-to-be-back-in-action-in-a-week/articleshow/5184876.cms

Hope everyone might have read the article..just for records...

Indian Navy to procure five midget submarines



Ankit

Sub production is vital.In the aftermath of Japan's defeat in WW2,at the Kure naval base a phot was taken of their midget subs almost completed.There were over "80" subs intact! Even in Germany,they were producing 30+subs per month at the war's end.Indian sub proiduction sjould be massively accelerated as subs are the only true stealth warships and we should have at least two conventional subs commissioned every year and one nculear sub every two years, apart from specialised mini/midget-subs..

Midget submarines in high seas operations?
Harbour operations is ok (both protecting own and attacking enemies), but high sees is rubbish, IMHO. Modify HDW subs if you need spec ops in ocean.
It's interesting though will the design of the subs be indigenious or a prototype will be chosen.

The very capable Project 865 Piranha midget submarine

Indian Navy to procure five midget submarines

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Share Print E-mail Comment[ - ] Text [ + ]STAFF WRITER 9:55 HRS IST
New Delhi, Nov 1 (PTI) To strengthen its capabilities of carrying out special underwater operations in high seas and enemy harbours, the Indian Navy is planning to procure five midget submarines for the Marine Commandos (MARCOS).

Submarines weighing less than 150 tonnes are classified as midgets and are used by the Navies to carry out underwater covert operations and surveillance missions.

The Navy has already initiated the process of procuring these vessels and recently issued a Request for Proposal to Indian shipyards including Hindustan Shipyards Limited, ABG and Pipavav shipyards, Defence Ministry sources told PTI here.

Initially, Navy is planning to get only five of these vessels but the inductions can be doubled later on.

The induction of these midgets is part of the Navy's efforts to strengthen its operational capabilities after the 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai last year, sources said.

brahmos missile seeker details

http://www.ausairpower.net/Granit-SGH-Y ... ker-2S.jpg

Great to know that we are going in some indig. midget sub production. IN had a heck of a trouble procuring even that small numbers of Cosmos that MARCOS have been using till now.

X posted from the IN anti piracy ops thread.

Some IN deployment is also to keep an eye on this:
Pak Navy begins war games in Arabian Sea

tsarkar,, your point about ergonomics ( or the lack of it ) is quite right..

i dont see even a chair from where folks can sit and watch the LCD screens .. the space in front of the LCD screens is full some kind of machinery

Something to uplift the mood (apologies if posted before)


Photo by RIA NOVOSTI.

Pak's naval manoeuvres might be linked to cooperative strategy with China during the time HH the Dalai Lama visits Tawang.Quite suspicious.Pak might also want some tamasha to enable its army and paras,which are being battered by the Paki Taliban and bombed in their own backyard,to cease its military ops against its own kind and fire at will at India.Therefore,an engineered crisis on the Indo-Pak border will well suit both Pak and China.We will be forced to fight or keep watch on both fronts,dividing our military resources.

The two Talwar being built loook simply great! Let's hope the next three are also ordered soon.

PS:The Japanese used their midget subs at Pearl Harobour for recce.They have enormous potential if used properly and can be either towed or carried by a mother ship or sub.The future of underwater warfare will be heavily influenced by small midget UUVs.

And the aft of them

tsarkar, i got the photo examined by another naval officer and he also confirms it is 'MCR of a modern ship' !!

What is this supposed to be?
Which Indian (hopefully) ships.

Thanks

the talwars on order in russia.

Talwar class

Talwar stealth firgates. Except that these 3 will be armed with the Brahmos instead of the Klubs?
These two will be followed by the third one, I guess.

So like in around 2012-2013 there will be 5 of these stealth frigates with the IN. 3 with Klubs(already in service) and 2 with brahmos.

Is there a possibility that 3 more will be ordered?

And I have a MDL guy who has worked on electrical systems on that same ship and can vouch that this is indeed an ops room.

3 initial ones with Klubs and 3 of the 2nd batch with Brahmos (third hull will be rolled out after the first is launched in mid-November). There's always a possibiliyu of more being ordered, esepecially if P-17A get delayed

Problem with Russian build ships is that they don't allow non-Russian armament to be integrated. Going forward, IN is standardizing on the Barak NG and Barak-1 SAMs as its principle air-defense missile systems. We see this in all its planned indigenous future ships - P15A, P28, P-17A, and ADS. Plus, capacity increases and upgrades are taking place at the Indian shipyards and some private players are coming into the scene. So it is bit unlikely 3 more Krivak class armed with Shitl SAMs will be ordered unless there are significant delays in indigenous production.

Doesn't it make sense to have armaments from the west and Russia in a deployment? The barak is good but there remains a possibility of the west being able to incapacitate it. The Russian systems on the Talwar class are then going to be working and vice versa wrt china.

Calling all Russian and Indian bhai log <people>!!

Is there any blog or website maintained by an amateur or professional or a company that details progress of Gorshkov to vikramdatya no matter how insignificant it is.

If not is it time BR did something ... but we would need some sources....
googling picasa for pics brings up a lot but not a lot of textual info...

I don't see the point of ordering new talwars. They are decent frigates but simply too small and 1 helo is alll they carry. Frankly I would let Mazagon and GRSE get on with P-17a and see of L&T or other private shipyards can make 3 more P-17's.

Quantity has its own quality in some cases, IN badly needs new ships, the more the merrier, besides they have commonality with earlier ships and none of our shipyards are empty or can produce ships at the rate at which they are needed. So nothing wrong with 3 more Krivaks.
Not to mention they have good enough firepower.

The government should be building more ships and more shipyards at the same time. They focused on ships but with so few shipyards there only so many ships that can be built at any given time.

And what if the orders decline or just fade off. What are you going to do with the shipyards?

Ships dont sail just in the navy. A growing economy needs a growing merchant fleet. Mitsubishi and Hyundai have some of the best shipyards in East Asia but they mostly build oil tankers and commercial ships. Ship building is a very profitable business and if not the Indian Navy, there are thousands of ships that need to be built to satisfy the appetite of the developing world, including India.

Brando saar, although more shipyards (actually more and better) and shipbuilding capability are the need of the hour, I am not too sure about the gubmint taking up the job upon itself. We have had GRSE, GSL, MDL, HSL and CSL for decades and the results have been less than satisfactory.

Expansion of private shipyards is market driven, and has been happening for quite a while now. I am sure that you would agree that the likes of ABG, Bharati, Pipavav, Tebma and L&T have covered a lot of ground over the past decade or so. Almost all of them have fairly ambitious growth plans and new greenfield yards coming up at various places on our coastline and things are not that bad. In fact, our private players are extremely well positioned in some niche areas like Offshore Supply Vessels (OSVs) and currently players like ABG, Bharati and Pipavav each have outstanding orders of around $1 billion or more.

As you have noted, the great shipbuilding powerhouses of SE Asia are focused on the merchant market, just like our private players (and CSL, notwithstanding the new Viraat). As a matter of fact, there is a glut in the world shipbuilding market currently and there have been few new orders coming in even at some of the biggies like HHI, Daewoo and STX. And the world also has to contend with a huge capacity buildup at Panda's own yards which may keep the industry in an oversupply situation for years to come.

I personally would favour a move by GoI to support the scaling up of private Indian players in the defence side of the business so that one day we could hope to have an Indian equivalent of a DCNS or a Fincantieri. Seen from that perspective, INS Arihant is a huge positive move IMHO.

The commercial side of things will take care of itself, with minimal government support (rather than intervention). All IMHO of course.

Just my 2 paise.

IN moved away from P-17s due to the cost (650 million+) and their construction time, Shivalik construction began in 2002. If it took MDL 7+ years to build one god knows how long it will take SY with no experience of building a frigate. Funds have been allocated to MDL/GRSE to upgrade them with newer cranes and lifts as part of P-17A program.and the design itself will further utilize modular construction.

As far as ship building is concerned, no major military or economic power has done it by buying ships built in foreign yards.
This is specially true of India, a nation which juts out into the Indian ocean and is surrounded by sea on two sides (If you consider India to be a diamond shaped entity )
As the Indian economy takes off, ship building on Indian shipyards will be the only way to supply the huge demands that are expected. There is a lot of growth potential.

If we just look at the Navy's orders, for the next 15-20 years, the current shipyards just can't supply that in time. More shipyards will simply have to come up, and they will have overflowing order books for the next 2-3 decades at least.

So true.

However, is there an accompanying growth in vision?

NRao saar, this is the reason for my belief that we have to slowly wean away from 100% dependence on PSU yards for domestic construction. There is nothing wrong with the idea of having govt owned yards, but we have seen time and again that these yards have not been able to absorb tech and/or build on it independently.

Why can't we try to develop a system wherein during the initial years NDB does a bit of a handholding for the up and coming private players with simpler designs and crafts? Sure this won't be the most cost-effective or efficient method in the near term, but the benefits will be there in the future - IMHO with the current system, we would still be looking outside in 15yrs time for ToT and mfg assistance when the next gen of warships are needed.

Can one of the gurus tell us about which way the current thinking is moving?

I completely agree with you that Private yards should take the lead in shipbuilding, however, expansion is not only determined by market forces in a risk averse economy like India, there is also the question of astronomical capital costs to set up a modern shipbuilding yard and the necessary infrastructure to support that yard that factor into the decision making. The need of the hour is more yards capable of building large tonnage ships. Large ships need massive infrastructure-most of it imported and the real profits materialize only after a decade of operation or so. The prospect of financing so much money towards a future so distant and in a area so new to private players, especially in India would terrify even the most audacious of company boards.
India is one of the largest producers of steel (behind China no doubt) and coupled with our low labor costs, a highly competent Indian shipyard should have a fair chance of competing with Chinese yards to get orders than say some yard in Japan or Korea or Dubai or Singapore that might have the expertise but are handicapped by their high procurement and labor costs. The only way to rapidly build capacity in the private sector is by the government drastically increasing the FDI in shipbuilding and the mandate that ALL Indian naval ships be built domestically. This could later be augmented to include merchant vessels and tankers as well. The domestic market in naval and merchant tonnage itself should be sufficient incentive to foreign players to finance the construction of yards and tie up with major Indian players to take the initiative away from the Chinese.

^^ But recent IT raid on ABG co. will definitely harm their progress. I am not saying let them do fraud but gov should come up with some encouraging schemes like SEZ line to motivate and help them to grow further.

Ankit

Am on an extended trip of India, based in Pune and am writing this from a cafe in a hurry.

Visited the Navy dockyard. Various ships in various stages of refit. Best not to get into details here suffice to say Yard was very busy.

Visited INS Sindhugosh & INS Shalki. Big difference between German and Russian approaches.Navy has removed pennant numbers from submarine hulls to make it harder for any potential spotters to follow movements in and out of the harbour.

Also, re-visited INS Mumbai after 9 years. It was a treat.

Tried to visit Viraat. She recently came out of refit and was away on exercises.Pity.

The Navy swears by the Barak. Very highly regarded.

Rakesh, perhaps, you may wish to email me at rxaxhxuxlxmx2x0 at gxmxaxixl.cxoxm (ignore all the x's) or if you are in India I could give you a number to call me after you email me.

Caught up with some Army CO's and discussed the Arjun. One of them was involved in the firing trails at Mahajan (he fired from the Arjun). Will post in Armour thread later.

Met a person who had been on the Arihant. Sorry, tha'ts all there is to say.