India’s own submarine assembly workshop inaugurated at Mazgaon

Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar a state-of-the-art submarine assembly workshop at the Mazgaon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
The inauguration is considered as a major step towards self-sufficiency in the area of submarine construction for the Indian Navy.
Key facts

• The newly built Submarine Marine Assembly Workshop is a pre-engineered building structure built at a cost of Rs 153 crore.
• It is capable to handle construction of multiple submarines simultaneously and will make it possible to assemble five submarines in the workshop at the same time.
• The workshop has features such as sewage treatment plan, grey water treatment plant, rain water harvesting, oily water separator plant for treatment of sewage, oily water and grey water respectively, with zero discharge into the municipal drains.
• This facility will enable MDL to go in for a second line of submarines concurrently which is assembling Scorpene class submarines at its East Yard in collaboration with DCNS of France.

Comment

• This facility will ensure lesser delays in building indigenous submarines for Indian Navy in the long run as well as for the envisaged second line of Scorpene submarines under strategic Project P 75I.
• It will also give boost to India’s acquired capacity to build submarines in the early 1980s which had built two submarines, INS Shalki and INS Shankul under a technology transfer agreement with German HDW.
• But for nearly two decades, no other submarines were built after India decided to buy Kilo class submarines from Russia.

Month: Current Affairs - May, 2016