No room for mistakes in a nuclear Navy

• Last month, the sonar dome—an anti-submarine device—of the guided missile warship Talwar, got seriously damaged after the ship’s anchor was accidentally dropped on it.

• In April, missile corvette Prahar sank after colliding with merchant ship Rajiv Gandhi.

• In December 2005, a speeding INS Trishul, another Talwar class stealth frigate, collided with a commercial ship, Ambuja Laxmi, outside the Mumbai harbour.

Coming at a time when the Naval Headquarters is already under a cloud for leakage of classified information from the Directorate of Naval Operations, the accidents do not bode well for the force that prides itself on its strategic long legs—stretching all the way from Gulf of Eden to Malacca Straits.

On their part, India’s strategic planners—despite an overt Nuclear Triad doctrine—have not yet been able to transform this “Cinderella Force” into an expeditionary force that can project dominance thousands of miles from the mainland.

But that transformation is the only way ahead. After all, The last time Indian Navy lost one of its men in action was in July 2000, when marine commando HS Tyagi took on militants in the Kashmir Valley. And before that, one has to dig into the annals of 1971 conflict to find out the last time the Navy got blooded in a conflict.

The timing of the incidents couldn’t be worse— coming even as the country is in the middle of an ambitious programme to catapult the Navy into the big league.

In two year’s time, in 2008, aircraft carrier Vikramaditya (rechristened Admiral Gorshkov) and a nuclear submarine, both acquired from Russia, are going to be inducted into the Navy.

Plus, the Indian indigenous nuclear submarine—or advanced technology vehicle (ATV)—is finally on track and currently the nuclear power plant is being fitted into its hull at the Visakhapatnam shipyard. By all indications, it will be inducted into the Navy along with Russian boat. Displacing around 6,000-7,000 tonne, the ATV will be similar in design to INS Chakra, the Charlie-class submarine leased out by the Russians in 1990s.

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