The Hindu : Front Page : Nuclear submarine project may get a kick-start

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 27, 2004

Front Page

Front Page

Nuclear submarine project may get a kick-start

By Praveen Swami

NEW DELHI, MAY 26. In the coming weeks, the Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, will open a file of which there is only one copy and which less than a dozen people have ever seen. His task will be to appoint a boss for the country's super-secret nuclear submarine project, code-named the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV).

The United Progressive Alliance Government's promise to resuscitate the comatose military modernisation plans has revived hopes that the country's super-secret indigenous nuclear submarine project may soon receive a kick-start. Following the retirement of Vice-Admiral R.N. Ganesh in January, the nuclear submarine project has been without a head. Vice-Admiral P.C. Bhasin, who retired as the Navy's Chief of Materials on February 28, had been tipped to take charge of the project, but his appointment was not ratified by the National Democratic Alliance Government.

Admiral Bhasin had been associated for several years with the nuclear submarine project, which is almost invariably led by retired officers familiar with the technology. Admiral Ganesh himself took charge of the project after his retirement, having earlier commanded the 5,000 tonne INS Chakra, the Type 670 nuclear submarine the Navy leased in 1998. He was one of the last officers familiar with INS Chakra, the model for the nuclear submarine, all the others who served aboard it having either retired or left the service.

Political indecision and resource constraints have dogged the nuclear submarine project from the outset. Admiral Ganesh had replaced Vice-Admiral Bharat Bhushan, who headed the nuclear submarine project for eight years. Admiral Bhushan, however, fell foul of the former Chief of Navy Staff, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. Shortly before Admiral Bhagwat was controversially dismissed by the then Defence Minister, George Fernandes, in December 1998, he had asked for a technical audit of the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2008-2009.

The nuclear submarine project remains one of the most closely held secrets in the defence establishment. Initiated in 1976, two years after India's first nuclear test, the submarine was to have been based on a Charlie-I class Soviet submarine. Over the years, however, the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Department of Atomic Energy faced an uphill struggle with the problems of miniaturising the reactor, providing it suitable containment and merging it with the hull.

Assistance from Russia, however, is believed to have helped in the resolution of several of these problems. Some years ago, the Russian Defence Ministry newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, reported that Moscow was helping India build a submarine hull for the ATV and in fitting it with a nuclear reactor. The report challenged previous statements by Russian officials that their country was not involved in the ATV project. India, however, has never offered any comment on this issue — or, indeed, on the very existence of the project.

Officials say finding a new head for the ATV project is crucial to the Navy's long-term ambition of playing an enhanced role in the country's nuclear weapon command and control structure, which is currently dominated by the Army and the Air Force. A strategic role had been envisaged for the Navy as far back as the mid-1980s, when India leased the INS Chakra. It had then become only the sixth country to operate a nuclear-powered submarine, after the nuclear weapon states Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States of America.

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