Indian Navy’s ‘Swavlamban 2024’ Focused On Addressing Technological Gaps, Production Delays As Seas Become New Battleground

Indian Navy: The Indian Navy is increasingly focussing on addressing some of the serious challenges ailing the force, particularly those related to technological gaps and delays in production, in order to drive out the operation challenges of modern-day warfare more effectively. The Navy’s annual seminar ‘Swavlamban 2024’ begins Monday and it will be aimed at exploring domain-specific sessions on niche technologies and funding the innovation ecosystem that is slowly gaining a considerable footprint in the country’s defence sector.   While the process of indigenisation has been going for decades in the Indian Navy, the push now is more on becoming “completely self-reliant” by bringing in more and more defence start-ups and MSMEs which will be able to produce technologies for the force in “quick time”, said Vice Admiral Krishna Swaminathan, Vice Chief of Naval Staff, during a curtain-raiser event.   The Indian Navy has emphasised indigenous construction for warships and submarines, achieved through partnerships with domestic shipyards like Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), and Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL).   The INS Vikrant aircraft carrier, commissioned in 2022, is the first Indian-built carrier and marks a major milestone in naval indigenisation. Similarly, INS Kolkata, INS Chennai, and other vessels in the Project 15A, 15B, and 17A destroyer and frigate programs were all indigenously constructed.   The Project 75 program, focused on Scorpène-class submarines, led to the construction of submarines like INS Kalvari and INS Khanderi in Indian shipyards.   The Vice Chief also said, “The Navy started its journey of indigenisation over six decades ago. Swavlamban is an expression of aspiration as a navy to become completely self-reliant. We want to innovate and to indigenise and, through indigenisation, become self-reliant. Swavlamban is an event which gives expression to our aspirations.”   He added that the last two editions of ‘Swavlamban’ resulted in the government granting Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for 22 projects worth Rs 2,200 crore, out of which 13 got translated into contracts worth Rs 1,194 crore.   “We want to induct cutting-edge technologies in the fastest possible timeline and in the most cost-effective manner and technologies that can serve the Navy well and can be sustainable indigenously so that we have a good supply chain and we have the people who design and create technology so that we can continue to evolve the technology to the next level,” said the Vice Chief.
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“There is always a requirement to upgrade the technology … Given the security environment today we need to focus more and more on homegrown technology and industry. This enables you to position yourself as an exporter too,” Sarabjeet Singh Parmar, Captain (Retd.), Indian Navy, told ABP Live.   Parmar, a Distinguished Fellow at the Council for Strategic and Defence Research, also said, “It will be incorrect to compare with any other country. China is a risk and threat then we need to look at it. But we should not be competing with them or any other country. We should focus on what we need and what is it our forces want, depending on what kind of threats we face. We should only compete with ourselves.”   Some of the upcoming projects of the Indian Navy are the Next Generation Destroyers (NGD), Next Generation Corvettes (NGC), and Multi-Role Support Vessels (MRSV). The IAC-2, India’s second indigenously-built aircraft carrier, is also in the pipeline.   In terms of its strategic heft, the Indian Navy plays a pivotal role in India’s Indo-Pacific strategy, as the region’s security and economic framework is increasingly defined by maritime power.   As a result, it has expanded its operational reach in the Indo-Pacific through regular deployments, especially under the Mission-Based Deployments (MBD) initiative. This program has enabled continuous presence in critical areas, such as the Malacca Strait, Gulf of Aden, and the Persian Gulf, as well as along the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.