Red Alert

Should an enemy missile still get launched and penetrate this screen, there is a red alert on board. There is now but one last-ditch defence, a modern version of a forerunner of the modern machine gun, known after its inventor as the gatling gun. Four guns comprising six rotating barrels, each firing some 600 shells per second, create a curtain of lead, hoping to hit some part of an incoming missile.

In battle, all these efforts are supplemented by a powerful electronic warfare suite called Ajanta. EW officer Commander Srikant Kesnur says the equipment here, designed and fabricated in India, enables his operators to pick up enemy transmissions of any kind -- voice, data or radar -- and carry out a range of counter measures to defeat or deflect an attack.

Should there be a hit, the area of damage is immediately located by a damage-control room and action taken to evacuate the wounded, smother the fire and prevent further damage. The most vulnerable areas are those housing the gas turbines and fuel storage tanks, both under water level. According to Lt-Commander P.R. Rangachari, an engineering officer, a sophisticated system sets off an alarm for people to clear out. The area is then sealed and the fire smothered with halon, an inert gas.

The ship is divided into three or four "citadels", each with their independent power, communications and fire-control systems, and therefore designed to take a lot of damage. It can even be used in areas where nuclear, chemical or biological munitions may have been used. It is hermetically sealed for passage through such areas and as it proceeds, it is covered with a fine spray of water from hundreds of jets which prevents any lingering contaminant. All systems are "ruggedized" and built in with a variety of back-ups, for almost everything. As Lt-Commander Sanjay Singh, a navigation specialist, says, "There is a ship-wide intercom and a phone system. If they fail, we have a sound-powered phone using a battery, and if these fail, there's a megger, a hand-cranked rheostat-like device to call."

Builders' Navy

In a country where making a 60- tonne Arjun tank has been the subject of an audit report, a couple of Public Accounts Committee investigations and much soul-searching, the fabrication of Delhi is serendipity. The achievement is a tribute to a generation of naval leaders who insist that the sound foundation of the Indian Navy lies in it being a "builders' navy". Says an analyst: "Army chiefs tend to favour the arm they come from, cavalry or infantry, while air force chiefs are fighter jocks. But the naval leadership is united: all of them, submariners, gunners and aviators are for a balanced navy with all elements of maritime power -- surface, under sea and aerial."

From the time India acquired the licence to make the Leander-class frigate from UK in the '60s, Indian naval planners sought to increase the "Indian" content of the ships. In the '80s, naval designers built the follow-on frigates, the Godavari class incorporating Soviet weaponry, western and Indian electronics. Work on the Delhi began in the early '80s. The design was "frozen" in 1988 though the keel was laid a year earlier. The ship was launched in February 1991 but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Indian fiscal crisis forced a delay in its commissioning.

The Navy is already looking towards the future. Vice-Chief of Naval Staff Vice-Admiral Sushil Kumar says designing and constructing the Delhi "has been a great confidence-building exercise for us". This will get a further boost when Delhi's sister ships INS Mysore and INS Bombay follow in the next two years. Three additional ships have received "implicit" sanction from the Cabinet Committee on Security Affairs, but the Navy now wants clear-cut authority to begin work on Project 17 frigates. If approved, work will commence immediately and the first of the class will appear seven years down the line and one each year thereafter. At 4,600 tonnes, these will be lighter than Delhi but will pack an equal punch.

The emphasis, according to Vice-Admiral Nath, will be on "stealth qualities as well as a better weapons package". They will also have the more compact and fuel efficient lm-2500 gas turbines to be made to a licence from ge of the US. The Navy is now seeking, as Sushil Kumar puts it, "to maximise the participation of industry in future warship construction". Recently, Admiral Bhagwat initiated discussions with the Confederation of Indian Industry on an ambitious plan which would provide synergy to the Navy's efforts to catch up on its lagging ship and submarine construction programmes.

Looking Ahead

There are other ambitious projects in place, some secret and some open. Little is known about the Advanced Technology Vessel for the construction of a nuclear-propelled submarine. Recently, the Navy got a sanction for the construction of two additional submarines of the ssk type. This ended the proverbial seven years of drought in which the Mazagon Yard got no orders and found its hard-achieved capabilities in submarine and ship construction eroding. The Navy is now confident of obtaining government sanction for the construction of an aircraft carrier at the Kochi shipyard to replace the Vikrant which was decommissioned last year.

It has taken 13 years for Delhi to be commissioned. And 10 years since the last major warship INS Gomati was added to the Indian fleet. This is just too long, say analysts. Both the MDL and the Navy have been crying themselves hoarse over the government's lack of understanding of the need for systematic multi-year funding and support for ship-building programmes. "It is against all principles of management, training and economy to go the way we have been going till now," says an exasperated dockyard official. But with budgetary procedures being what they are, change is not quite round the corner. In real life, problems rarely go away. For the present at least, as it hoists its ensign to mark the birthday of its newest baby, the Indian Navy is basking in the glow of pride and achievement.

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