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Friday, May 16, 2014

Warships in peril as defence ministry blocks sonar purchase

Kolkata class DDGAt the start of this year, INS Vikramaditya, the navy's new aircraft carrier, sailed into the Arabian Sea near the end of a non-stop, 15,000-km voyage from Russia. Accompanied till the Mediterranean by a single Talwar-class frigate, the Vikramaditya was joined by an armada of Indian warships for the last leg of its journey.

This was not celebration, but operational safety. With the navy's best warships worryingly incapable of detecting modern submarines, such as Pakistan's Agosta 90B, the flotilla was tasked to bring Vikramaditya safely home.

The reason for this blindness to submarines: the ministry of defence (MoD) has steadfastly blocked the import of an Advanced Towed Array Sonar (ATAS), a sensor crucial for detecting submarines in warm, shallow waters like those of the Arabian Sea.

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