The accident that led to the fire in INS Sindhurakshak , causing it to sink in Mumbai harbour early on Wednesday morning, has dealt a huge blow to the Indian Navy. With the Arihant nuclear-propelled submarine beginning sea trials and the launch of the INS Vikrant , the Navy was on a high. Now, it is desperately looking for the causes of this, as yet unexplained, disaster, with the fate of 18 naval personnel still unknown.
This is the worst peace-time disaster to strike the Navy. In January 2011, the frigate INS Vindhyagiri caught fire and sank after colliding with a merchant vessel in Mumbai harbour. Fortunately, its entire complement of 200 personnel were rescued. The Sindhurakshak tragedy is doubly compounded. The boat was the ninth of the ten Kilo class submarines that India acquired from the erstwhile Soviet Union between April 1986 and July 2000.
It was also the most modern as it had got an extensive refit at the Severodvinsk shipyard and rejoined the fleet only a year ago, in June 2012. Its two-year refit saw it equipped with the lethal Club S missile, fired through the torpedo tube and with a range of 200 km.
The submarine had suffered a minor fire accident earlier in 2010 as well, when one sailor was killed and two injured. At the time, reports indicated that hydrogen gas leakage had triggered a fire in the battery compartment. For obvious reasons, the battery is the suspect this time as well.
Significantly, all Indian submarines use batteries manufactured in India that have proved superior to the ones the Russians had provided. However, the causes of the accident can only be accurately ascertained after the Navy’s court of inquiry. Its results will be of great importance, because the Navy is currently looking for another set of diesel-electric submarines, in addition to the Scorpene, which is being made at the Mazgaon Docks in Mumbai with the first boat expected only in 2016-17.
The new project, called P-75(I), has been on the cards for the past decade, and a request for information was issued in 2008, but there has been little progress since. The same bureau that designed the Sindhurakshak type of submarines is also in the running, with its new Amur 1650 submarine, along with the German Type 214, the French Scorpene and the Spanish S-80. The key technology in this new class will be Air Independent Propulsion that enables the boat to stay underwater for much longer than the diesel-electric boats.
India has 14 conventional submarines in operation — the German HDW Class 209 submarines (Shishumar class) were commissioned between 1986-1994, while eight of the ten Kilo class boats are nearly a quarter of a century old.