Indian Navy Developments & Discussions

[FalconSlayers]

View: https://x.com/OfficialGRSE/status/1849777699427950986

 

[darkflame]

so with the commissioning of last kalvari class submarine by end of this year and 3rd arihant class submarine Aridhaman early next year we will end up having 20 submarines in total

 

[shade2]

so with the commissioning of last kalvari class submarine by end of this year and 3rd arihant class submarine Aridhaman early next year we will end up having 20 submarines in total

Our seas should be aircraft carrier mukt.

 

[Azaad]

so with the commissioning of last kalvari class submarine by end of this year and 3rd arihant class submarine Aridhaman early next year we will end up having 20 submarines in total

Another way of looking at things is in this decade we may well end up inducting only 1 Akula class SSN from Russia if at all .

In the meanwhile , all the 6 Scorpenes will be due for MLU with India make AIP from next year onwards. That means each submarine will be out of action for a good 3-4 years.

By the middle to end of the next decade all the HDW & Kilo class submarines will be retired. As it is their performance now is sub optimal give their age . By the next decade they'd barely move outside the harbour. Their replacements be it the additional 3 Scorpenes or thru the Project 75 I have yet to see the contracts being signed.

Further we'd see 2 SSNs vide Project 77 & possibly 1-2 S-5 class late next decade. So it's a mixed bag.

 

[darkflame]

Another way of looking at things is in this decade we may well end up inducting only 1 Akula class SSN from Russia if at all .

In the meanwhile , all the 6 Scorpenes will be due for MLU with India make AIP from next year onwards. That means each submarine will be out of action for a good 3-4 years.

By the middle to end of the next decade all the HDW & Kilo class submarines will be retired. As it is their performance now is sub optimal give their age . By the next decade they'd barely move outside the harbour. Their replacements be it the additional 3 Scorpenes or thru the Project 75 I have yet to see the contracts being signed.

Further we'd see 2 SSNs vide Project 77 & possibly 1-2 S-5 class late next decade. So it's a mixed bag.

i think kilos and type 209s inducted in 90s most likely will get a life extension refit and may continue to operate till 2040s, agree with every thing else though.

 

[Ayan Barat]

i think kilos and type 209s inducted in 90s most likely will get a life extension refit and may continue to operate till 2040s, agree with every thing else though.

"Continue to operate" is a vague parameter as you can continue to operate MiG-21 today but the question is how good it'll be?

What he meant by age is not the fact that whether it was inducted in 1980 or 1990 but more with the fact that it was designed in 1968. Midlife upgrades can definitely extend the service life of an equipment by improving the electronics or adding better communication systems but it can't deal with things like detectability or engine noise.

 

[SlayingHell]

Another way of looking at things is in this decade we may well end up inducting only 1 Akula class SSN from Russia if at all .

In the meanwhile , all the 6 Scorpenes will be due for MLU with India make AIP from next year onwards. That means each submarine will be out of action for a good 3-4 years.

By the middle to end of the next decade all the HDW & Kilo class submarines will be retired. As it is their performance now is sub optimal give their age . By the next decade they'd barely move outside the harbour. Their replacements be it the additional 3 Scorpenes or thru the Project 75 I have yet to see the contracts being signed.

Further we'd see 2 SSNs vide Project 77 & possibly 1-2 S-5 class late next decade. So it's a mixed bag.

They should fully pivot towards a combination of SSNs and XLUUVs (100t-500t), as SSKs don’t offer any meaningful advantage for their mission needs. For tasks like coastal patrol and choke-point operations, XLUUVs are a superior choice. After all, a human in the loop can only respond to what their sensors detect; there’s nothing inherently unique to having a human onboard that can’t be programmed into these systems. Missions conducted by SSKs are effectively high-risk ventures: if the first volley isn’t successful, the vessel becomes a sitting duck.

Each SSK is costing around $1 billion, and we lack the manufacturing efficiency that China, Korea, or Japan have in building them cost-effectively. Investing $1 billion per SSK doesn’t make financial sense when compared to the returns on a $3 billion SSN, which offers far greater value for the investment.

At this point, it would be more practical to complete the acquisition of three more Scorpenes and conclude the SSK program there. Cancel the P75I and P76 projects, and instead focus on establishing an SSN production line similar to the U.S. model. With serialized production and batch-wise improvements, we could aim to produce one SSN per year. Given an SSN lifespan of roughly 32 years, this would allow us to maintain an equilibrium fleet of 32 SSNs.

 

[Ayan Barat]

XLUUVs

Yup but first clear few of my doubts

1. Almost all the frequencies gets absorbed by water except for VLF and ELF and by the very definition of frequencies, these are 10-100km high wavelength that needs ridiculous antenna systems. The most common being the trailing wire antennas on doomsday planes that are used only in as the name suggests, doomsday where the plane flies as close to the submarine as possible and transmit as short of a message as possible like "N China".
So how are you going to manage the control of that UUV?

2. Even in the previous case, the communication is very basic with sometimes being as simple as Morse code but more importantly; it's just one way. A submarine is never supposed to talk back unless it's sinking.
So how will you manage the transfer of high amount of high fidelity data from all the sensors of the submarine to the control station and then the commands from there with as little lag as possible?

3. Currently submarines have three vulnerabilities; they can be detected by SONARs, thier noise can be picked up by hydrophones or their conning towers may get caught by SARs when they surface. But now you're adding a fourth vulnerability to it; the RF.
How are you going to deal with enemy ECCMs picking up the comlink between the UUV and the control or even worse; electronic warfare?

there’s nothing inherently unique to having a human onboard that can’t be programmed into these systems.

A 20 man crew can lurk with their engines turned off and SONARs switched to hydrophone mode for 10 days. No radio communication, no ping, no engine noise...just listening to all the sounds around them. Based on the sounds and the immense experience of the crew, they can accurately identify a target and engage it...all without a single noise other than the slight disturbance by a torpedo tube getting flooded.

I guess this can be termed as something inherently unique to having crew onboard. If even it's not enough then on one hand you'd need to transmit data from hundreds of different sensors back to the control station just to know whether it's working or not and on the other two guys can go to the engine room to change a faulty bearing.