The Ministry of Defence clears the procurement of six advanced submarines

The Defence acquisition council (DAC), India’s apex procurement body, approved the proposal at a meeting on Friday and the navy is expected to issue requests for proposal (RFP) for the program, called P-75 India soon.

The Defence Ministry cleared a project worth ?43,000 crores for building six advanced submarines in the country under the government’s ‘strategic partnership’ (SP) model to bolster the Indian Navy’s underwater force levels and counter the rapid expansion of China’s submarine fleet.

This will be the first RFP to be issued under the SP model, which seeks to provide a fillip to the government’s Make in India program. The model envisages indigenous manufacturing of major defence platforms by an Indian strategic partner who will collaborate with a foreign original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to set up production facilities in the country.

In January 2020, the defence ministry cleared two Indian and five foreign shipbuilders to take part in the project to build high-tech submarines in the country, one of the biggest Make in India programs in the military sector.

The Indian strategic partners cleared to collaborate with the foreign OEMs are Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited and L&T. The foreign yards they can team up with for the project are the French Naval Group, German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems, Russia’s Rubin Design Bureau, Spain’s Navantia and South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Company.

The ministry will take the project forward by issuing RFPs to the shortlisted Indian strategic partners who will then respond with techno-commercial offers in collaboration with one of the shortlisted OEMs.

the DAC is India’s top defence procurement body that evaluates and green-lights acquisition proposals made by the armed forces. The other members of the council are the minister of state for defence, the chief of defence staff, the three service chiefs, the defence secretary, secretary defence research and development, secretary defence production, and director-general, acquisition.