Indian Defence Review

The issues discussed in this article are globally relevant: they are more specific to the Indian Navy and warship design and building in India.

The tides of change that are sweeping India and the globe have presented many challenges as well as opportunities for the future. Rather than let ourselves be swept away by the changes, we, the warship designers and builders have to proactively manage these changes with vision and adaptability. Taking stock of the challenges that face the warship designers and builders the article finally presents the recommended strategies for the future.

History

The glorious maritime past and rich shipbuilding tradition of India dates back to as early as 2300 BC. However, in the beginning of the 16th century our control over the seas started diminishing with the invasion by the Portuguese in the end of the 15th century and thereafter the British East India Company in the 17th century. The East India Company had set up factories and a shipyard for repairing and building ships. In 1735 the shipyard was shifted from Surat to Bombay, which is now the Naval Dockyard (Mumbai). During the course of the next 100 years this yard built not less than 115 war vessels and 144 merchant ships, including 84 gunships for the Royal Navy. The Indian ships were superior to the British built ships, prompting the Admiralty to place orders on Bombay. This provoked the historical strike among the Thames Shipbuilders.

The early Indian Naval fleet consisted mainly of squadron of ships deployed from the Royal Navy. Post-independence, the first Chief of Naval Staff, Sir Mark Pizey floated the ten-year replacement plan of the Indian Naval ships in 1951, which also envisaged building of minor naval vessels. The Directorate of Naval Construction was formed in Oct 1954 with Capt L Kirkpatrick as the first DNC. The DNC was established to take care of all aspects of naval construction and act as a nodal agency at Naval Headquarters, for the acquisition & induction of all ships from abroad. To complement warship building with indigenous capability for warship designs, the Corps of Naval Constructors was formed in 1956. Subsequently, the Central Design Office (CDO) was set up in 1964 for carrying out full-fledged design work. This Central Design Office emerged as the Directorate of Naval Design in 1970 to form the nucleus of all warship design activities in the country and was subsequently upgraded to be headed by a Director General Naval Design (DGND), in 1976. The three pioneers Padma Shri S Paramanandhan, Shri SS Dotiwala and Shri VS Dhumal, were the first three Naval architects of the Navy who have been the founding architects of Naval Construction in India.

Background

Warship building in Independent India was ushered in with the license production of the Leander class frigates in the early sixties at the Mazagon Dock Ltd. Six ships of the class were built and delivered between 1972 and 1981 with the last two of the class undergoing extensive design

modifications for accommodating the organic Sea King helicopter. This modification was carried out by the Indian Naval architects and these ships then became the smallest platforms in the world to carry such large helos. With a modest beginning of designing ocean going Tugs, LCUs and SDBs in the sixties, the navy’s design organisation embarked on the design of the Sandhayak class survey vessels and eight ships were built and delivered to the navy. These ships serve as the workhorses of the navy for hydrographic survey operations. In the seventies, the navy’s design organisation embarked on the first warship design – the Godavari Class frigate and three ships were built and delivered to the navy. The highlight of the design was the use of the same propulsion plant of the smaller Leanders to drive a larger hull with 1000t more displacement to give a slightly better top speed performance.

Three more ships with a modified design of Godavari, designated P16A Brahmaputra class, were built and delivered between 2000 and 2005 by GRSE. The early eighties also witnessed the design of the Khukri class (P25) corvettes. Four ships were built and delivered with four more of the modified P25A class delivered by GRSE between 1998 and 2003. The design of the Magar class LST (L) was undertaken in 1987. Two ships of the class have been built and delivered to the navy with the last one built to a slightly modified design. Three more ships of the follow on class have been ordered on GRSE, Kolkata. The first of the series ‘Shardul’ has been delivered. In the mid-eighties, the navy embarked upon the design of the prestigious Delhi class destroyers. Three ships of the class have been built and delivered by Mazagon Dock Ltd. These majestic ships are the proud frontline combatants of the navy, showcasing India’s design and building capabilities for warships.

Our three defence shipyards – Mazagon Dock Ltd, GRSE Kolkata and Goa Shipyard Ltd have, despite several trials and tribulations, successfully given form to the designs of the Navy. Realisation of these designs would not have been possible but for the dedication and steadfast commitment of our shipyards.

In the late eighties and the early nineties there was a lull in indigenous design and construction activity due to lack of funding for new projects. However, after obtaining a sanction for design in 1995, the design of the P-17 class stealth frigates was progressed. Three ships of the class – Shivalik, Satpura and Sahyadri are under construction at MDL, Mumbai and are expected to enter service by end of this decade. The P-17 design marks a watershed in the design history of the navy. This design embodies several new design concepts, and enhanced survivability features to meet future requirements. With the designing of the P-17, the naval design organisation acquired the capabilities for “stealth” designs. This has also benchmarked the design strategies and design procedures for future projects. The navy’s design organisation is also engaged in the design of the P-15A class destroyers, which are a follow-on of the successful Delhi class but with improved stealth features and updated weapons and sensors. Three ships of this class are under construction at MDL, Mumbai. Besides the above the design organisation is engaged in the design of P-28 class ASW corvettes of which four ships are on order on GRSE, Kolkata.

Inspired by the successful track record of designing 17 classes of ships to which about 80 vessels have been built and delivered to the navy, the government accorded sanction for indigenous design and construction of the aircraft carrier. This vessel is being designed by the navy’s design organisation (DND) for building at the Cochin Shipyard Ltd.

There has been a significant growth in the ancillary industry base over the last few decades to support the growing warship building in the country. We are indeed proud that the indigenous content of our warships has gone up to over 75%. The last few years has also seen the private sector joining the fray for indigenous development of weapon systems.

Tides of Change

The world is now passing through many tides of change. The changing geo-political and geo-economic scenarios are redefining global relationships and strategic alliances. The emerging economies owing to their growing political stature are having to cope with added dimensions of their defence strategies and foreign policies. World over the theaters of action are moving from the blue waters to the littoral seas. Navies are facing conventional as well as asymmetric threats. There is also the need for cooperative joint operations with international maritime forces to serve the diplomatic initiatives of the government as well as participate in joint disaster relief operations. The rapidly changing technology has brought in its wake a host of possibilities, which if ingeniously exploited can help build cost effective warships in enviable timeframes with tremendous flexibility of roles.

Against the above backdrop no nation or organisation can survive if it is resting complacent and adapts only to incremental changes. What is required is a whole and sensible transformation to cope with the rapidly evolving environment.

Vision for Transformation

In realisation of the above facts, the Navy has voluntarily indoctrinated a “Vision for Transformation”. The major aspects of the vision relevant to warship design and construction are as follows:

In a nutshell, the navy’s vision enjoins us to recognise the full spectrum of operations of our future warship and focus on best exploiting the available technology through partnership with industries to produce cost effective warships with considerable flexibility in attractive timeframes.

Challenges Ahead

Nurturing and Sustaining Design Manpower. As in the past the navy’s design organisation was, for the most part, engaged in the design of one major class of warship at a time while also supporting the terminal stages of construction and delivery of the last few ships of a previous class. Today, however, this organisation is simultaneously engaged in the design and production support of a class of stealth frigates, a class of modern destroyers, a new class of ASW corvettes and last but not the least an aircraft carrier. This has consequently placed a very high demand for trained, skilled and qualified manpower for the design organisation.

Despite receiving sanctions for more design officers, the navy is unable to meet the requirements especially of naval constructor officers. This has consequently led to some design work sharing with the shipyards. This has, however, not really solved the problem. With the boom in shipbuilding industry, the government design organisations including defence shipyards are finding it difficult to attract qualified personnel for design.

It is only the recruitment in the “uniformed cadre” of the Corps of Naval Constructors of the navy that still holds out some promise for induction of qualified officers who can be trained and retained for the specialist tasks of warship design. Here again the numbers available for recruitment are dwindling despite the charm of the “white uniform” and promise of a wider job profile due to competing offers available to the fresh graduates.

Need for Flexibility of Roles. In keeping with the Navy’s vision for transformation the future warships have to help ensure the relevance of the Navy across the full spectrum of conflict rather than being specific only to armed conflict against designated adversaries. This could call for extended out of the area operations either singly or in conjunction with transnational forces in foreign littorals. The Navy could participate in UN mandated operations or disaster relief. The future warships must, therefore, be able to sustain away from home ports for a long time as well as be suitable for a variety of roles. They must be also capable of networking with their own and transnational forces for joint operations.

Technology Management. The changing technology has afforded several efficient processes, equipment and systems for warship design, construction and maintenance. It has also revolutionised the manner in which we can manage the processes of design and construction. But it has also brought in its wake the risk of obsolescence. With traditional ship design and building methods having a gestation period of up to 10 years from concept to commissioning, the systems become obsolescent by the time ship enters service. There are also considerable difficulties of product support during the service life of the ships due to obsolescence of technology. It, therefore, calls for ingenious strategies to exploit technology for designing, building and supporting warships so that they remain modern and supportable throughout their service life. These technology management strategies may broadly be categorised under the following.

Obsolescence management would call for open architecture systems that would support upgradeability in the future. But besides mere software upgradeability and adaptability we are also looking for upgradeability or change of entire functional capabilities of the ASW, AAW, or ASV modules of future warships. In fact the UK’s smart procurement procedure calls for procurement projects to cater for future technology insertions. The US is also employing strategies for evolutionary acquisitions of weapons and systems for warships. The concepts of modularity, cellularity and SSES are now paving the way for total mission modularity. Entire mission modules can be fitted or removed from ships for upgradation, role change, or repair without impacting the availability of the ships.

Although the spirit of “concurrent design and build” strategy adopted for indigenous warship projects was aimed at achieving reduced build times, the process is now beset with several stifling points when the designer and builder do not get detailed interface definition of the numerous “handshake points” of the OEM’s system /equipment with the ship. The whole picture gets a little murky with the customer wanting continuous improvements, the supplier continuously developing the system and both arguing with the shipbuilder that design and production in the current state can do without the data for much more time. We, therefore, need to adopt a strategy of modularity that will allow minimal interfaces of the OEM equipment/system with the ship and even these minimal interfaces can be standard agreed interfaces at very early stages of the project.

Modularity will also allow the OEM to best design the system from consideration of functionality and ergonomics and allow considerable time for development and testing of the system within the boundaries of the module. This will also reduce the problems of integration of the ship designer/builder, who has to cater only for the standard ship interfaces. We could also consider tasking the OEMs for life cycle support of modular systems so that the onus of obsolescence management and product support is on the OEM. There are of course difficulties in adopting this model for imported equipment and systems. But with the Navy’s drive for indigenisation this should increasingly become possible in the future. This will considerably reduce the logistic and repair loads of the Navy for equipment and systems.

The IT enabled technologies have brought a great revolution in the manner in which we can manage warship design and building tasks. The web-based features of the ship design software have allowed “collaborative design” in which all the stakeholders in the design can participate with the main designers. This will also afford greater user participation in design to perceive and visualise the ship arrangements and the OEM participation for designing his part of the interfaces with the ship and the shipyard participation to evolve detailed design and translate the design to production information. Through a process of change/ access controls, adequate security and configuration control of the design can be maintained.

With evolving technologies, sophistication & complexity of equipment and systems, warship projects are becoming very capital intensive and high-risk ventures in terms of realising intended capabilities within the timeframe and cost budgets of the projects. There is, therefore, a need to forge a much stronger partnership between the navy, shipyard and the industry in order to realise a new warship. This partnership will be based on early and continuous involvement, deep sense of purpose, assured ordering, transparency of cost and timeframes, judicious balancing of cost, time & capabilities and sharing of risks of the project. The focus of the Navy must be on defining capabilities of equipment and systems while the detailed specifications are evolved by the industry. This will also help clearly demarcate responsibilities for development within strict timelines.

Cost and Time-effective Solutions. With a comfortable economy, while funding warship projects has now not been much constrained, there is nevertheless the pressure to complete projects within projected cost and timeframes. The present system of obtaining sanctions and revised sanctions seeks to place considerable accountability for cost and time overruns. Future acquisition projects have to, therefore, carefully work out strategies for completing projects within projected cost and timeframes. This now underlines the need to complete the design and freeze ship definition in adequate detail before sanctions for build are obtained.

Vision for the Future

Greater User Visibility in Design. We seek to increasingly use virtual reality in the future to help the user to more clearly perceive the ship arrangements in order to introduce required changes at early design stage itself. The present practice of tendering drawings and documents are not adequate for the user to get a feel of the design. The thrust would be to have increased simulation studies to optimise ship arrangements and systems design and enable product evaluation before selection.

New Strategies for Design and Construction. The paper, the Navy’s manpower resources for new designs are overstretched. One of the in-house strategies adopted is to restructure the organisation into skeletal project groups and dedicated specialists groups so that skill levels are optimally utilised. Efforts to involve the shipyards for routine design tasks has not proved very successful due to inability of the yards to attract experienced and skilled manpower. What could be considered for the future is raising a joint venture design bureau between the shipyards, private sector and the navy so that routine design tasks can be given to this organisation, which can offer attractive terms to high quality manpower. The responsibility of the core design tasks has to remain with the Naval Design Organisation. It must continue to perform the top level integrator’s job for all warship designs. It is also proposed to have collaborative design agreements with some foreign shipyards/agencies in order to imbibe the modern technology of integrated designing, modular designs and mission modularity.

Similar concepts of collaboration are proposed to be extended to ship construction as well. With the expected greater definition of “design” at the module level with clear definition of ship interfaces, ship construction can be accomplished in shorter timeframes. The prospects of collaborative construction between shipyards, including private shipyards wherein different parts of the ship can be paralley constructed at different shipyards and thereafter integrated together will also be seriously considered in order to optimise shipyard loadings and maximise compliance of delivery dates of ships and submarines to those envisaged in the Maritime Capability Perspective Plan.

Investments are being made to modernise the shipyard and prepare them for integrated construction. It is also under consideration to have a collaborative design and FOC build contract with a reputed agency who would also provide lead yard services for building follow-on vessels in an Indian shipyard using modern build strategies of integrated construction. We are already in dialogue with M/s BEL our largest communication and sensor equipment supplier for modularising the sonar and communication equipment and systems for the future. We will progressively thereafter extend the concept to mission modularity for which we expect keen participation of our indigenous equipment suppliers.

The existing Wide Area Network Connectivity (WANDS) with the shipyards needs to be extended to major equipment/system suppliers. Web-based utilities need to be acquired and added to existing ship design and production software in order to facilitate design in a multi-user environment.

To further extend the scope of collaborative design and construction it is proposed to set up integrated product data environment to support a warship project from early stages of design, through construction, commissioning and life cycle support. Such a model envisages the creation of a digital ship model, which will evolve with ship design, equipment procurement and construction and serve as the single product data model for use in the collaborative design and construction environment.

On delivery, the digital ship model which will be the complete repository of comprehensive ship fit definition, all design documentation and procurement information, will serve as the database for through life support of the ship. The same product data environment will serve to track and support all operational, logistic and maintenance activities through the life of the ship.

Network Centric Capability. The future Indian Navy will be technology-enabled and a networked force, with high comfort levels of own and joint networks when operational. The primary thrust is on transition from platform-specific AIO systems to Network Centric ones and transition of platforms to digital systems that are enabled for networked operations. Standardisation of NCO systems on platforms, ensuring that future systems are amenable to network centric operations both within own as well as with friendly forces, will be pursued.

Develop Advanced Hullforms. To meet the Navy’s requirement of speed, agility and flexibility we need to develop advanced hybrid hull forms combining the advantages of powering, sea keeping and stability. At the same time the hull form has to afford considerable usable space in convenient dimensions for housing mission modules to give the platform considerable flexibility of roles and potential for future technology insertion. We would keenly look forward to working closely with our R&D establishments through the hydrodynamic sub committee to evolve new unconventional hull forms.

Advanced Propulsion Systems. Future propulsion packages will have to meet the demands of high power density, high reliability, high endurance, flexibility and amenability to efficient controls coupled with low manning requirements. The last two decades have seen the use of a combination of different prime movers to combine their advantages for a reliable and efficient propulsion system. Moving from mere consideration of unit procurement cost (UPC), navies have weighed the implications of through life support costs and decisions in the future will be driven by considerations of total ownership costs. With the anticipated future induction of electromagnetic rail guns, laser weapons and “electric power” intensive future weapon systems, the concept of “Integrated Electric Propulsion” is gaining considerable grounds. Consequently the total installed power generating capacity on board the ship can be rationalised to achieve lower unit procurement costs, commonality of prime movers and greater flexibility of operations. With the prospects of super conducting motors and generators the future of Integrated Electric Propulsion could be bright. However, we are watching the developments closely, particularly with regard to its other implications on the ship.

Enhanced Stealth of Platforms. Despite the early misgivings regarding the relevance of stealth for future naval combatants, there has been an increasing thrust to reduce signatures of naval platforms. This has given rise to very innovative hull forms and use of composite hull materials. Over the last decade the naval design organisation has consolidated considerable knowhow and expertise in the use of signature prediction tools. What is now required is developing correlations between prediction tools and actual measurements. Besides the above there will be continued thrust in developing stealth materials such as CFRP and stealth applications for onboard use. We also need to enhance the domain knowledge in the field in order to effectively pursue the complementary technologies of soft kill measures. Future platforms will also have integration of the soft kill and hard kill measures with onboard assessment capabilities for real time ship signatures.

Conclusion

The Indian Navy is passing through an intense phase of modernisation and transformation. The future induction programme of ships, submarines and weapon systems will have an increasing thrust on indigenous acquisition. Evolving technology and need for flexibility of roles of future warships call for adopting bold new strategies in design and construction. Stronger partnerships between the navy and the industry including transnational cooperation as well as judicious exploitation of available modern technologies for collaborative design and building will help meet the navy’s vision for transformation.

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