GRSE set to deliver ASW corvette INS Kavaratti to Navy soon

PTI, Jan 27, 2020, 2:52 PM IST

Kolkata: Adding to Indian Navy’s firepower, Defence PSU Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) is set to deliver anti-submarine warfare stealth corvette INS Kavaratti to the Navy soon, its Chairman-cum-Managing Director Rear Admiral V K Saxena said.

‘Kavaratti’ is the last of the four Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) stealth corvettes built by the GRSE for the Indian Navy under Project P28, he said.

“All trials of the ship have been successfully completed, and we plan to deliver it by the end of this month,” Saxena told PTI here.

‘Kavaratti’ will be the 104th ship to be constructed and delivered by the GRSE, he said.

With a displacement of 3,300 tonnes, the ship has a carbon composite superstructure, which has been flawlessly integrated with the steel hull through technology developed by the GRSE.

“The carbon composite superstructure provides advantage of lower weight of the warship, thus increasing its stability, manoeuvrability and faster acceleration,” Saxena said.

The new technology will mean that the warship, which has 90 per cent indigenous components, will also require lower maintenance, he said.

The ship is equipped to fight in nuclear, chemical and biological warfare conditions and its weapons and sensors suite is predominantly indigenous, according to Defence sources.

The first of the four ASW stealth corvettes under Project P28 – ‘Kamorta,’ was delivered to the Navy in July 2014, ‘Kadmatt’ was delivered in November, 2015 and ‘Kiltan’ was delivered in October 2017, a GRSE official said.

All these four corvettes under the project are named after islands in the Lakshadweep archipelago in the Arabian Sea, he said.

The GRSE currently has a strong order book position of around Rs 27,400 crore under which there are a total of 19 warships at various stages of construction under six projects that are underway, the official said.

Of these, five projects are of the Indian Navy and one is of the Indian Coast Guard.

The Defence PSU has delivered five warships to Indian Navy in last 10 months, between March 2019 and December 2019, he said.