As India keeps its steady pace in the modernization of forces, the Indian navy has its priority set on a massive lineup of orders for warships and submarines over the next 10 years costing $51 billion USD.
On Friday, the Indian state minister for defense announced plans for the navy’s large numbers of orders set up on next decade’s timeline, The Week reported. Minister Shripad Naik addressed a virtual video conference organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry to execute future business opportunities at Goa Shipyard Limited and Mazgoan Dock Shipbuilders Limited. During the conference, Naik mentioned the Indian navy’s future procurement plans.
The line of purchasing scale is expected to be up to nearly half of the navy’s decade military expenditure, according to the statement.
India’s Navy spent more than 60 percent of its budget on capital expenditures, focusing 70 percent of the capital expenditure on indigenous sourcing from domestic industries for five years, totaling about 66,000 crores INR, which effectively increased the foothold of homebuilt military equipment usage.
The Indian Navy accounts for the largest share in domestically-built platforms in all branches of Indian armed forces. Indian Shipbuilders achieved warship construction capability three decades ago, and today, the Indian Navy operates homebuilt lead vessels like the Kolkata Class destroyer, Shivalik class frigate or Arihant class SSBN, as well as the soon to be inducted first indigenously built Aircraft Carrier INS Vikrant (R44).
During the meeting, Minister Naik also added that more than 60 ships, including surface warships and sub-surface warships, are under various stages of extensive construction today in lead Shipyards of India like Mazgoan Dock Shipbuilders Limited, Goa Shipyard Limited, Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers, Cochin Shipyard Limited and Hindustan Shipyard Limited. During the meeting, Confederation of Indian Industry’s Goa state council Chairman Blaise Costabir mentioned that Indian maritime interest is growing at a rapid pace and with it the need for maritime security and shipyards project will also grow exponentially, as PM Modi pitched a $5 trillion economy by 2025. India’s naval industry to also be in the focus of great growth. With it, Indian defense shipbuilding ambition will increase with robust growth ahead, per the chairman.
He also discussed that with the vast coastline of India and with the hostile neighbor on west coast, Indian Maritime security will be of prime importance, which will drive massive shipbuilding capability on the road of high growth and stability. Furthermore, he added India increased its annual defense budget by 9.3 percent in 2019-2020 and it can be expected that this trend will continue ahead for next 10 years without any issues in capital expenditures.
