INS Khanderi, the second of six Indian Navy Scorpene-class submarines, is scheduled to be launched on January 12.
Built by the Indian shipbuilder Mazagon Dock Limited, the diesel-electric submarine is being launched some 22 months after the launch of INS Kalvari, the lead ship in the class, in April 2015.
INS Kalvari was expected to be commissioned into the Indian Navy in 2016 but delays in sea trials postponed the boat’s entry into service.
Latest media reports say that the Indian defence ministry thinks that the vessels should be commissioned only when they are ready to complete all tasks assigned to them during deployment.
Navy officials told reporters they have asked Mazagon Dockyards Limited and the French DCNS to complete all trials, including sensors and weapon fitment, before it is handed over to the Navy for operations.
Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd Mumbai (MDL) is building six Scorpene-class submarines for the Indian Navy through a ‘transfer of technology’ agreement with French shipbuilder DCNS.
In August 2016, DCNS and India were hit by a massive leak of documents containing top-secret technical details of the Indian Navy’s Scorpene-class submarines.
The documents contained 22,400 pages and detailed secret combat capabilities of the six Indian Navy submarines designed by DCNS. Multi-government efforts to arrest the person responsible for the theft of data are still to yield results.