Submarines: Indian Submarine Fleet Fading Away


September 3, 2009: India's slothful and larcenous weapons procurement bureaucracy has been blamed on the delays, and cost overruns, encountered in building six French Scorpene diesel-electric submarines. Currently, the project is two years behind schedule. But it is even more behind schedule if you count the several years the Indian bureaucrats delayed it even getting started. The delays are going to cost India an additional half a billion dollars. That's for a project that is  currently expected to cost $4 billion.

There's some urgency to all this, because by 2012, five of India's 16 subs (10 Kilo and two Foxtrot class Russian built boats and , four German Type 209s) will be retired (some are already semi-retired because of age and infirmity). Two years after that, India will only have five working subs.

But the bureaucrats dithered for nearly a decade, and it wasn't until 2005 that India signed a deal to buy six French Scorpene class diesel-electric submarines. But now problems have developed. The first Scorpene was supposed to enter service by 2012, with each boat costing about $500 million. But political and management problems have delayed that date by two years, and raised the price per boat by over $100 million. The French have raised the prices for some key components, and India has had some problems in getting production going on their end. The first Scorpene was to be built in France, with the other five built in India.





While India was largely concerned with the Pakistani navy when the Scorpene contract was negotiated and signed, China is now seen as the primary adversary. The Chinese subs are not as effective as the Pakistani boats, both because of less advanced technology, and less well trained crews. India could use their Scorpenes to confront any Chinese attempt to expand their naval presence into the Indian ocean. Thus the delays and cost overruns with the Scorpenes are causing quite a lot of commotion in India. But at the rate India is going, it will be nearly a decade before all six of the Scorpenes are in service. At that point, India would have about a dozen subs (including nuclear powered models under construction. China will have over 60 boats, about 20 percent of them nuclear.



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