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Simultaneous commissioning of ships built by the same yard is a matter of time – not a measure of yard efficiency. The above background gives us mixed signals on India’s shipbuilding capabilities.
There are many reasons for this but some of them can be highlighted.
Both our primary shipyards engaged in building destroyers and frigates, i.e. MDL and GRSE, were built at a time when the displacement of such ships was less than 2,000 tons. Furthermore, even for larger ships, modular construction – a method in which all the parts that go inside the ship are placed inside smaller modules, which are progressively added together to form a larger ship – is everything done before launch. Was non-existent.
With the progressive increase in the size of ships, with the displacement of a full destroyer now exceeding 7,000 tons, launch weight became a major constraint. This places restrictions on the amount of pre-outfitting that can be performed on a ship before launching from a slipway, a process that requires deep water to ensure that the hull is not damaged by grazing the seabed. Not because it slides down the ramp. Water.
Adding parts to a ship after it has been floated is an expensive, inefficient and time-consuming method of building a ship. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions.
Capital dredging of water around the yard and creating access to deep water is expensive and difficult to maintain. A better solution is either to relocate the yard to a location where there is access to deep water, as China has done for many of its shipyards, or to build a subsidiary in deep water using existing facilities to build larger ships. To form/acquire a company. For small ships.
The second issue relates to increasing yard productivity through reduction in overheads. One means of doing this is the integration of shipyards, at least those owned by the government, under a single management, so as to optimize the loading of each and reduce unwanted duplication in terms of machinery, infrastructure and manpower. Consolidation has been the norm in many parts of the world – China State Shipbuilding Company and Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation are prime examples.
While we congratulate our yards for building state-of-the-art ships, it is important that they are also motivated to make improvements to ensure that taxpayers’ money is optimally spent to meet the maritime security needs of the country. be used.
(The author is a former Assistant Military Advisor in the National Security Coordination Secretariat. This is an opinion, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
