France plus India have authorized an agreement to work on air-independent steam (AIP) technology to upgrade the latter’s Kalvari-class submarines, deepening the growing strategic relationship between the 2 countries.
AIP technology allows typical submarines to stay immersed for weeks each time, approaching the marine endurance of nuclear submarines.
This month, Indian native Express reported that Naval Group France and India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) acquired signed an agreement to develop fuel cell AIP to be retrofitted at the first-of-class INS Kalvari, a derivative of the French Scorpene-class submarine.
The report cites a DRDO statement that says senior officials of DRDO New Materials Research Lab (NMRL) and Naval Group signed the agreement to extend cooperation for the detailed style phase of adding India’s indigenous AIP into the INS Kalvari, with Naval Group certifying the incorporation.
The review did not mention specifics about the AIP’s performance, but did state it is unique in generating hydrogen onboard instead of storing this aboard in water form.
India’s new AIP system is most likely derived from Naval Group’s Fuel Cell 2nd Generation (FC2G) model , which breaks diesel fuel in the reformer to extract hydrogen, using water oxygen and nitrogen as oxidizers. When the hydrogen is mixed with oxygen, it produces electricity to cost the submarine’s electric batteries and produces water used in the breaking process.
Asian countries Times has documented on France’s help India’s 5 th generation fighter and conventional submarine plan s. People from france aerospace company Safran in cooperation with India’s DRDO programs to co-produce jet engines for India’s 5 th generation fighter. At the same time, India’s Kalvari-class submarines are built under a 2005 technologies transfer program with France.
Still, India’s program is lagging behind the ambitions. In a July 2022 article, The Print reported that will India needs help with its ambitious system to acquire 24 submarines by 2030, which includes 18 conventional and six nuclear-powered submarines. Currently, India works only 16 submarines, with one nuclear ballistic missile boat (SSBN) and no AIP submarines.
China’s increasing presence in the Indian native Ocean and Pakistan’s rapidly modernizing boat fleet are driving India’s renewed submarine modernization project.
Prakash Panneerselvam, assistant professor at the Nationwide Institute of Advanced Studies in Begaluru, notes in a latest write-up the Indian Ocean is an attractive area of functions for the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N), which unlike the Western Pacific where the US and Japanese navies heavily patrol is relatively safe for PLA-N submarines to operate.
Panneerselvam mentions China’s naval base in Djibouti as facilitating those operations. He or she also notes the particular growing presence associated with China’s hydrographic and surveillance ships and underwater drones within the Indian Ocean, which usually he suggests may be mapping underwater features and passageways to get future submarine operations there.
He or she argues that China’s increasing footprint within the Indian Ocean poses a challenge to India’s sphere of impact in the region and a security risk in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), as these deployments could spy upon Indian naval amenities and vessels in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Ocean.
Pakistan can also be significantly modernizing its submarine fleet to help offset its army asymmetry with Indian. In an August 2021 content for the Center intended for International Strategic Research , Samran Ali notes that historically the Pakistani Navy has operated smaller sized numbers of ships, submarines and aircraft vis-a-vis the Indian Navy blue, with the latter having more resources, assets and ambitions associated with controlling the Native indian Ocean.
Ali notes this disparity requires Pakistan to implement an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy to restrict the Indian Navy from operating close to Pakistan’s coastline and far from its important trade routes in the Native indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.
Consistent with this strategy, Pakistan purchased eight Hangor-class regular submarines from Cina, the export version of China’s 039A/041 Yuan-class AIP submarines equipped with Stirling engines, Naval News reported in December.
The report information that four from the submarines are currently under construction at China’s Wuchang Shipbuilding Market Group (WSIG) and that work on the first of four submarines built in Pakistan by Karachi Shipyard & Architectural Works (KS& EW) began in December 2022, with the first 4 to be delivered within 2022-2023 and the last four in 2028.
Meanwhile, a stop-gap refit is certainly underway on India’s four aging Russian-made Kilo-class submarines, which now face various issues due to Western-led sanctions on The ussr.
This particular January, the Times associated with India (TOI) documented that one of India’s Kilo-class submarines sent to get refit in The ussr is stuck because of problems returning this to India.
“The boat should have ideally come directly back from Russia. But due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, there are transportation as well as other problems. So , the program now is to sail it to a Norwegian port and then carry it on a sea-lift ship to Mumbai, ” said an un-named source quoted simply by TOI.
Asia Times has reported on India’s press to reduce its reliability on Russian army equipment. Concerns in regards to the effectiveness of Ruskies weapons due to heavy losses in Ukraine, the possibility that weapons purchases may be redirected or even delayed to replace fight losses, and sanctions on Russia’s arms industry are all invoice discounting into India’s rethink about Russia’s stability as its primary weapons provider.
At the same time, India’s concern regarding being reduced to an US subordinate provides prevented it from going all-in to the Quad Alliance, which France is not a member. Similarly, France’s press for strategic autonomy reflects ex-leader Charles De Gaulle’s vision of creating an European community that is not subordinate to the US, along with France playing the leadership role.
India and France are thus well-suited to reinforcing every other’s strategic autonomy through defense cooperation in aerospace and naval technology, making a security partnership impartial of US influence.