New Delhi,
Faced with a belligerent China, India has launched its project to build six nuclear-powered attack submarines. Nuclear power will allow greater endurance under sea as the submarines need not surface, to what is called, ‘breathing’.

Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba, replying to a question on making six SSN’s (nuclear-powered submarines), said: “It has been kicked off and I will leave it at that. It is a classified project. The process has started. I will not comment further”.

Addressing a press conference ahead of Navy Day (December 4), Admiral Lanba, on being asked about the threat from Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean under the garb of anti-piracy patrols, said, “For a sub it’s an odd task to be on anti-piracy patrol. We have carried out threat assessment of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) submarines.”

PLA subs are coming for two deployments every year. This pattern is on since 2013. With submarine technology becoming more sophisticated, tracking these under-sea vessels is a challenge. China has 61 submarines, including nine nuclear-powered, allowing longer endurance.

India already has two nuclear powered submarines — the INS Chakra leased from Russia and the indigenous one, INS Arihant. The latter has the capability to fire nuclear-tipped missiles.

In yet another hint at how India is challenging China, the Admiral said, “We are deployed 24×7 in key areas in the Gulf of Aden to straits of Malacca, besides the straits of Sunda and Lumbok.” These are the ingress and egress routes to the Indian Ocean.

Speaking on induction of new assets as per the Navy’s perspective plan, he said 34 ships were under construction. Work on indigenous aircraft carrier is going on and hopefully it would join the Navy by 2020-end.

Commenting on the recent navy-to-navy agreement with Singapore, he said: “We are looking at other countries for logistics agreement like Singapore and have started taking fuel at sea from the US three months ago at the Gulf of Aden”.

Speaking about the controversy in the Russian media that a US team boarded the INS Chakra, the nuclear-powered submarine, he said, “No American has even seen it from close quarters.” The submarine is on lease from Russia.