India’s first-ever indigenous nuclear submarine INS Arihant will live up to its name of being the “destroyer of enemies’’, armed as it will be with 12 nuclear-tipped missiles, once it joins service towards end-2011. While INS Arihant will propel India towards achieving an operational nuclear-weapon triad, or the ability to fire nukes from land, air and sea, the navy also wants its Rs 30,000 crore Project-75 I for the second line of conventional diesel-electric submarines to be swiftly finalised due to its fast-dwindling underwater combat arm. But first about the 6,000-tonne INS Arihant, which many believe will be more of a ‘technology demonstrator’ for the subsequent two follow-on nuclear submarines being constructed under the secretive Rs 30,000 crore Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) project. Dismissing such talk, ATV director-general Vice-Admiral D S P Varma said that INS Arihant will be a full-fledged strategic submarine when it’s commissioned around end-2011. “It jolly well will have the missiles,’’ he said. After the 111-metre-long INS Arihant was launched by flooding the dry dock at the Shipbuilding Centre in Visakhapatnam last July, the next big step now is to ‘fire’ its miniature 83 MW ressurised light-water reactor for the harbour-acceptance and sea-acceptance trials. The testing of 700-km range K-15 SLBMs developed by DRDO to arm the submarine, which has four silos on its hump, will be held thereafter. While the two-stage K-15 is a pygmy compared to the over 5,000-km range SLBMs of the US, Russia and China, work on a 3,500-km variant is now underway to make India’s underwater nuclear deterrent more credible. Incidentally, all the 71 US submarines are nuclear-propelled. China, in turn, has 10 nuclear submarines in its 62-submarine fleet.
What’s A Nuclear Submarine?
It’s an underwater vessel powered by a nuclear reactor. Other submarines need to surface for recharging, but an N-sub can stay submerged for long periods. INS Arihant (Sanskrit for ‘destroyer of enemies’) puts India in elite club of 6 nations (along with the US, Russia, France, the UK and China) that possess N-sub capabilities
Why Is It Important?
Arihant’s induction will complete India’s nuclear weapons triad, ie capability to launch N-missiles from air, land and water. As India has declared ‘no first use’ of N-weapons, its defence systems must survive a first strike. Arihant’s advantage is stealth. It can lurk at ocean depths and fire missiles from under the sea
ARIHANT’S VITAL STATS
Length: 111m
Weight: 6,000 tonne
Powered by: Single shaft 83MW N-power plant
Speed: 28kmph (surface); 44kmph (underwater)
Capability: Can fire 700km range K-15 missile, may later fire cruise missiles
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