Navy’s quest for foreign torpedoes ignores DRDO
17 Jun 2013 5:31 AM IST
Despite the alleged scams in defence deals that have surfaced recently and Defence Minister AK Antony’s assertions about the armed forces accessing their weapon and equipment from indigenous sources, the Indian Navy is seeking to procure anti-submarine and anti-ship torpedoes from foreign sources.
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) claims that it has a ‘state-of-the-art’ torpedo undergoing intensive trials called ‘Varunastra.’ The first phase of trials of this new torpedo was conducted between October-November last year. This year, too, it will go through the same regimen at the same time-window.
The new DRDO torpedo is capable of notching up speeds of 40 plus knots; have a range of about 15 kilometres; electrical propulsion and acoustic homing device, required to hit the target. The research organisation’s sources say that its acoustic homing device is so sensitive and accurate that it can beat the Acoustic Counter-Counter Measures (ACCM) of the target ship/submarine.
They say that the torpedo should be ready to inducted by 2015, which suits the delayed delivery dates of the P-15A (Kolkata class) and P-15B (extended Kolkata class) stealth destroyers that are currently being built.
The navy had earlier planned to buy from an Italian company, WASS, that manufactures torpedoes. But a corruption charge against its parent company has stalled the purchase. So, the navy has again issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking to generate responses from foreign vendors.
In line with the competition being engineered, a German company is also in the fray. In fact, all this while, the torpedoes the navy was using were of Russian or German origin.
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