Postby arshyam » 30 Mar 2015 23:42
Hitesh sir, maybe the idea is to disperse our capabilities in order to serve as backup in case one or more facilities are taken out during war? Having only MDL for diesels and Vizag (L&T + HSL?) for nukes means that in the event of hostilities, our capabilities will be crippled if either of these are damaged. I am not considering HSL as a player in diesels for now, given their experience with Sindhukriti, we will have to wait and see. Plus, being in Vizag means HSL could also be damaged in this scenario. Anyway, such actions will have a direct impact on MRO for subs.
See what we are doing for shipbuilding - MDL, GRSE, now CSL all have built up some capability, soon to be followed by Pipavav and Kattupalli (hopefully). Granted, they are now sort of specialized in destroyers, frigates/corvettes, and carriers respectively, but the experience gained by each can be used to do at least some amount of MRO and keep the fleet going during a crunch.
I think the idea behind different Scorpene + P75I is to eventually hedge against such risks, and to have 2 different diesel sub lines in the long run (and 1 nuke line). Our littoral sub requirement will likely be revised upwards of the 24 subs-by-2020 plan, given the aggressive Chinese threats, the need to show the flag in neighbouring areas like SL, Maldives, etc., and the need for nukes to go longer and farther away from the home land. So reliance on diesels will increase in order to secure the coastline, and leave the nukes to do the strategic stuff.
Two diesel lines make sense if we think of having 30-40 diesel subs eventually. That number will mean around 5-10 subs in refit at any time, plus new sub construction, which requires more capacity than MDL can provide currently. Also, these sub numbers are not too far fetched, given the 51 SSKs the PLAN has to defend a ~14000KM coastline. Our coastline is only 7516KM (per Wiki) so we may not need that many SSKs, but we definitely need more than what we have today. Finally, our requirement is different in that we will need more SSNs to secure our IOR region, so a sub fleet of 40 SSKs + 15 nukes (attack or boomer) seems plausible in the next 30 years.
Given this, the non-MDL P-75I plan makes perfect sense. I just hope MDL gets some follow-on orders for more Scorpenes soon after commissioning the first few in the next 2-3 years.