India Orders Eight Warships Of Its Own Design From Two State Shipyards

India has signed contracts worth about 539 billion rupees for eight next-generation corvettes, the first warships to be designed in-house by the Indian Navy and built by state-owned yards that had to compete for the work

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Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers, in Kolkata, will build five. Goa Shipyard will build three. The contracts were signed in Delhi on Monday in the presence of the defence secretary.

Both elements of the arrangement are new. Indian warships have long been built domestically, but their designs have frequently drawn on foreign origin or external consultancy. The navy’s own design organisation produced these. And rather than nominating a public-sector yard, as is customary, the ministry put the work to a competitive process among them before dividing the order.

A corvette is the smallest class of ocean-going warship, below a frigate, and is built for work close to shore and in confined waters. The ministry says these will carry missiles, weapons and sensors capable of operating against targets in the air, on the surface and underwater. It lists their intended roles as protecting shipping lanes, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, coastal defence, littoral operations and maritime surveillance.

The industrial case is made in labour rather than money. The ministry expects construction to generate around 7.2 million person-days of work in the shipyards themselves and 46 million person-days across supplier industries and small and medium enterprises over ten years. Person-days count days worked rather than jobs, so the figures describe the volume of labour across a decade rather than a headcount. The ministry says the project will draw on Indian-made materials, equipment and technologies.