Cavalier India Defence Training Academy

But its submarine woes are unlikely to end soon as it stares at a lost decade of its underwater arm. The Indian Navy is decommissioning the INS Sindhudhvaj, a Kilo-class submarine, sometime this year. It will set in motion a process of phasing out of a class of boats that have formed the backbone of the navy’s underseas fleet for nearly three decades. The decommissioning ceremony was due in Mumbai this April but is now delayed by two months awaiting clearances from the defence ministry. The Sindhudhvaj was acquired from the Soviet Union in 1987. With its retirement, the navy’s submarine arm dips to 14 units. Seven of these submarines are in the Kilo class. Dubbed the ‘Kilo’ class by NATO, the Project 877 EKMs are one of the world’s commonly visible conventional submarines with 62 units currently in service across nine navies in the world. India acquired eight such subs between 1986 and 1991. It later acquired two more submarines from the Russian Federation, between 1998 and 2000. They...