India Signs Deal To Build Two Admiral Grigorovich Class Frigates Equipped With BrahMos Missile And Stealth System

In a boost to the Make-In-India initiative, the Indian government has signed an agreement with Russia for two Admiral Grigorovich class frigates which would be built at India’s Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) as an addition to the previous deal for two Russian built frigates of the same class, reports Livefist Defence.

The ships are a highly advanced configuration of the Talwar class and will likely be the most complex ship built by the GSL. The addition of the ships gives the Indian Navy a boost as they would then posses ten ships from the Krivak class.

The two ships built in the Yantar shipyard in Russia’s Kaliningrad are scheduled to arrive by 2022-2023 while, the Indian made ships will be delivered before 2027. An intergovernmental agreement (IGA) had been signed by the Russian and Indian governments to procure the ship in 2016.

BrahMos supersonic cruise missile system will be integrated into the newly acquired ships making them part of the few elite ships in the Indian Navy with this capability.

On a visit to Russia in August, senior Russian officials had been quoted by Livefist as saying, “The Grigorovich ships differ quite considerably from the six ships delivered to the Indian Navy earlier. Although the first Talwars were dubbed the first stealth ships of the Indian Navy, the low visibility qualities of the latest 11356 ships are known to be much stronger, and thus they can be justifiably labelled stealth frigates. Another major difference will be the joint Indo-Russian BrahMos missile systems instead of Klub.”

India has finally figured out the complex enterprise that is Frigate building, and the P17 Shivalik-class is a prime example of that. Also, the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited shipyard is currently building India’s most advanced destroyer class, the P15B Vishakapatnam.