so have the issues with the engine been solved? i mean has the US agreed to revoke its ban on ge working on the engines? i read somewhere that the navy contracted german engineers to take over the work, but i'm not sure. btw i found a picture of the ship if you'd like to see.
INS have bigger problems, who was the genius who forgot to relise there is no where to install turbines :shudder
Sorry, Mumbai has no berth for Kolkata
SUJAN DUTTA
New Delhi, March 16: The navy is all at sea because there is no room in Mumbai for Kolkata.
The INS Kolkata, the navy’s “stealth” guided-missile destroyer named after the Bengal capital, is floating -- unable to sail -- in the waters off the west coast metropolis.
Not a berth is available in the Mazagaon Docks where the INS Kolkata is to be moored so that it can be fitted with four gas turbines to propel it; given a landing deck and a hangar for two helicopters; armed with missiles and torpedoes to make it the most powerful warship of its class.
On schedule, the 6,700-tonne INS Kolkata would by now have been in a “hot start” mode with four Ukrainian M-36 Gas Turbine propulsion systems and ready for sea trials. Classified as Project 15Alpha, the INS Kolkata, the first of three in its class, would have “an updated weapons package and new-look exteriors and improved stealth (making it difficult to detect) and will be delivered beginning with the end of this decade”, says official literature distributed by the directorate of naval design.
But senior naval sources say a conservative delivery schedule envisages that the INS Kolkata will be ready only in 2013, at least three years after its deadline.
The INS Kolkata is not the only warship to be delayed. A parliamentary committee study has found that nearly all the stealth projects of the navy totalling worth more than Rs 19,000 crore are late. More than 30 ships and submarines are being built for the Indian Navy at home and overseas.
The INS Kolkata was “launched” three years ago. Its keel was laid in September 2003 when it was announced that it would be commissioned in 2010.
But now there is not a single shipyard in the country large enough to accommodate the INS Kolkata. Calcutta’s own Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers is too small to accommodate a destroyer. Even then, it has its berths full with orders for offshore and fast patrol boats and frigates.
In Mazagaon Docks (MDL), a senior naval officer told The Telegraph: “They do not have the manpower, design, capability, availability of berths, and the wherewithal to meet monthly targets -- simply put, there does not seem to be the will.”
He said MDL makes a 12 per cent profit in any case and cost overruns add to its revenues and all projects, including the strategic, licensed-from-the-French Scorpene submarine venture, are running behind schedule.
Worse, the INS Shivalik stealth frigate project has been hit by an insidious bombshell after the new Obama administration instructed GE to stop work on a pair of gas turbine engines on the ship under US laws.
The Indian Navy is now trying to work around the laws by drawing in consultants from Italy and Germany by using the defence public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. The INS Shivalik is likely to be delayed by at least nine months.
The INS Kolkata is an advancement over the INS Delhi, the destroyer currently in service that also has the INS Mumbai and the INS Mysore in its class. The enhanced weapons package on the INS Kolkata will include twin-tube torpedo-launchers, anti-submarine rocket launchers, and 28 Long Range Surface to Air Missiles (LR-SAMs), possibly the Barak-NG (next generation).
The Barak-NG has run into a controversy itself with the CPM demanding that India should pull out of the joint venture project. A venture between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for which the cabinet committee on security has committed at least Rs 10,000 crore, the Barak-NG or Barak-II ship missile defence system is yet to be tried and tested.
The Indian Navy has armed its vessels with the first generation of Barak missiles with which it claims it is satisfied.
In keeping with the new look that the city it is named after aspires for, the INS Kolkata has been given a sophisticated design that compares among the best of warships in its class.
Indian Naval Headquarters asked its designers to come up with a destroyer that can operate with fully integrated multi-function radar systems and, for the first time, 16 silos -- eight on each side -- capable of launching Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles.
Estimated to cost nearly Rs 8,500 crore, the INS Kolkata “will be capable of exerting sea-control in a multi-threat environment”, says Rear Admiral M.K. Budhwar, director-general of naval design.
