Race For The Seas: Indian Navy Looks To Modular Construction To Match China’s Pace In Ship-Building

Indian Navy is looking to adopt modular construction technologies to achieve parity in ship building pace with the rapidly expanding Chinese Navy, Tribune has reported.

The new methodology is being applied to the Navy’s Project 17-A for shoring up the Navy’s frigate strength, a follow-up of the Project-17 for inducting Shivalik class warships. The first ship under the project is expected to be inducted in three years while the remaining six are to be ready by 2026-27.

The Navy hopes that the newer method for ship-building will help bring down the construction time from the present 7-8 years to 3-4 years. Although already in use in the US, Europe, Japan and Korea, this is the first time it is being applied in India. Construction of the first ship began in February 2017.

Till now, the ships had been built progressively building on the structure but as per the new regime, the separate modules can be built at different places. This allows parallel work on the ships at the same time and the blocks can then be assembled. This also helps bring down manpower requirement with automation applied to make the process sleeker.

Garden Reach Ship Builders (GRSE) Kolkata is working on three of the warships, while Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL), Mumbai is working on the other four. The cost of each warship will be around Rs 6,300 crore.