Indian Scorpene submarines soon to be fitted with AIP anaerobic propulsion

On the same day of the delivery of the 5th and penultimate Indian Kalvari-class submarine, INS Vagir, to the Indian Navy, the Naval Materials Research Laboratory (NMRL), belonging to the Indian agency of the armament DRDO, and the French naval group Naval Group, designer of the Scorpene submarine on which the Kalvari class was designed, have signed a framework agreement for the integration of an anaerobic propulsion system (AIP for Air Independent Propulsion) of local invoice on board the INS Kalvari, the first building of the eponymous class to enter service in 2017. The agreement, signed today in Mumbai, will allow the integration of the new Indian propulsion on board the ship, under the control and with the certification of the French naval group.

In fact, the Kalvari will be the first submarine in the Scorpene family to be equipped with AIP propulsion. This will provide the ship with significantly increased diving autonomy, thus improving stealth and combat effectiveness. However, the implications of this agreement, based precisely on a technology developed in India and not imported, are very important, and go far beyond the P-75 program to which the Kalvari belongs. Indeed, the success of this procedure will not only make it possible to transform the 6 submarines of the class towards this type of propulsion, but it will also change the data of the P-75i program which specifically provides for the local construction of 6 new submarines. equipped with an imported AIP technology, and which today is in difficulty because of its costs and excessive constraints of the specifications established by the Indian authorities.

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