At 9am on the coming Monday, India’s new defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman will oversee her first warship commissioning ceremony. At the naval dockyard in Visakhapatnam, she will flag into service the INS Kiltan, India’s third Project 28 anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvette. But there’s a significant difference between the Kiltan, and the two class types — INS Kamorta and INS Kadmatt — that came before her. A 100-tonne difference.
While the Kamorta and Kadmatt are built entirely of steel (DMR249A special grade high-tensile steel developed by SAIL in India), the Kiltan’s entire superstructure has been constructed with carbon fiber reinforced plastic — instantly shaving off 100 tons in weight from the brand new submarine hunter. The superstructure has been imported from Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems.
Apart from the weight saving, top sources in the Indian Navy said the advantages of the new material are four fold: (a) It provides essential corrosion resistance to the exposed superstructure, (b) improves sea-keeping ability by increasing metacentric height (a measure of the initial static stability of a floating body). And finally, (c) the use of non-metals reduces radar signature and boosts stealth specifically by suppressing extremely low frequency electromagnetic radiations.
Sources also said the Kiltan will be stealthier, more agile and a more survivable ship at sea than the two previous P28 corvettes. Weight gain from radar signature reduction work had extracted a significant price on the ship’s nimbleness and top speed during the final design stages. The decision to explore a composite superstructure was decided as an imperative for the two final ships. The Kiltan will cruise a shade faster than the two previous ships at about 24 knots.
The P28 corvette class, built by the state owned Garden Rearch Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) in Kolkata, are nearly 90 per cent indigenous, says its maker. The Kiltan takes indigenous content up a few notches further. While the two ships in service are finding their feet, the class ran into rough weather with the national auditor earlier this year over delays and the fact that the ships still don’t have their full complement of armament. The Kiltan, for instance, should have been delivered by July 2014 according to the original project contract.
A nimbler P28 entering service tomorrow is good news, but the class remains without critical armament that had to be held off the lead class as a result of procurement delays. Sources indicated that integration work was is currently proceeding on a ‘fast track’.
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