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Posted on 04/20/2003 7:59:33 PM PDT by BOSTON BRAHMIN
India launched its first indigenously built stealth warship as part of its ambition of increasing its maritime influence in the turbulent Indian Ocean, officials have said.
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The ship, christened INS Shivalik after one of India's Himalayan peaks, has been built at the state-run Mazgoan Dock Ltd. (MDL) near Bombay and is designed to evade interception as part of its stealth capabilities, they said Friday.
Warship Shivalik, part of a national naval project to build three stealth ships, will be assigned operational duties when fully armed by December 2005, defence ministry officials said.
The remaining two ships will be commissioned with the Indian navy in 2006 and in 2007.
"Shivalik will play the dual role of offensive and defensive combat and it also has the capacity to attack in-shore targets," a ministry official said.
MDL chief H.S. Kang said Shivalik's original cost when the project left the drawing board in 1994 was estimated at two billion rupees (42 million US dollars) and warned the cost would jump 10 times by the time it is deployed in two years' time.
Defence Minister George Fernandes, who attended the ship's launch, said successive governments had neglected India's maritime boundaries as none had perceived the threat of aggression from its seas.
"Since the day the country got freedom (in 1947) until the recent Kargil war, the country's maritime borders and the navy has been neglected," Fernandes said in reference to a near-war India fought in 1999 with rival Pakistan.
Fernandes promised to pay "special attention" to upgrade India's maritime preparedness, and stressed the role of navies during the recently-concluded war in Iraq.
"During the invasion of Iraq, naval forces of the United States, Britain, Spain and Italy were indulging in front-line operations and were not merely playing a supportive role for the war on land," he said.
Indian officials described INS Shivalik as a frigate-class warship and said it was likely to be fitted with the 300 kilometre (180 mile) anti-ship cruise missile BraHmos, being jointly built by India and Russia.
Naval chief Admiral Madhvendra Singh said Shivalik will carry long-range missiles capable of attacking shore targets, medium-range air defence missiles, specialised radars and anti-submarine warfare hardware.
India's 137-ship navy, which is also expecting the delivery of a Russia-made stealth destroyer this year, plans to build an aircraft carrier to double its fleet of such naval combat platforms to two.
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