By Staff Correspondent
Larsen & Toubro has been at the forefront of indigenously developing cutting-edge defence technologies for the Indian Armed Forces for over three and a half decades. Earlier L&T was trusted by British India for repairs of Hull and propulsion machinery, installation of self-defence guns on commercial vessels and degaussing the hulls of oil tankers and cargo vessels. L&T re-entered defence shipbuilding and this journey has been intertwined with the Navy’s indigenization journey since the mid-eighties and has resulted in a partnership that was built on a common vision of strategic independence across the Naval segment.
Over the past more than three and a half decades L&T has been extensively involved with the Indian Navy having begun right from component level to design and develop equipment, systems to building of complete platforms. The initiation was made on the backdrop of the replacement cycles of equipment for existing platforms in service in the eighties. The long supply chains, sheer exorbitant costs and poor responsiveness of the Foreign OEMs made the Navy build a resolve to aggressively indigenise. This offered a golden opportunity for the Indian Industry – willing to take on challenges – to realise contemporary systems matching the footprint of the old non-ops equipment and systems on a matching footprint. This mirrored the ab-initio development ability of L&T and built mutual trust for a sustained partnership.
L&T’s journey began with replacement orders for components/subsystems and then grew on to develop complete systems matching with the replacement cycles of weapon launch systems. Over years, L&T emerged partner to Navy’s indigenisation pursuits across range of indigenously developed Weapon Systems, platform specific Engineering Equipment, Life support systems, sensors, Electric Power Generation and Distribution equipment & systems, Integrated Power Management Systems, Degaussing Systems, Integrated Bridge System, and Integrated Platform Management Systems and in recent times to autonomous surface and underwater vehicles. Over these years L&T achieved a substantial understanding of the Naval domain and the stringent environmental challenges faced by the User and therefore developed keen insights into the unique requirements of the Indian Navy.
Post opening of the Defence sector, licensing Defence Production to Private industries, and release of the first Defence Procurement Procedure in Dec 2002 amplified in June 2003, the initial groundwork was laid for enabling Private Industry to participate in the Acquisition programmes of MoD and in the natural consequence of maturity gained, L&T decided to enter the Warship building. In line with the ethos at L&T not to be dependent on anyone beyond the national boundaries, and the fact that Naval capital vessels designed by the Naval Design directorate remained nominated to Govt owned shipyards, a Warship Design Centre was created in-house.
A team of bright Naval Architects and aspiring design engineers suo-moto created designs for four classes of Naval platforms within 2 years, starting from first fundamentals. In keeping with global trends, these designs were evolved in 3-D environment targeting adoption of Industry 4.0 processes and practises for unmatched speed and build efficiencies. With these capabilities in Platform as well as equipment and systems made in-house, L&T has carved a unique position for its offerings in Warship and Submarine building.
As part of long term commitment to the indigenous fleet expansion plans of the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, L&T invested in setting-up India’s most modern mega Greenfield defence shipyard at Kattupalli, near Chennai on the East Coast. Spread over a vast area, the shipyard layout ensures unidirectional flow of work and material. The shipyard is equipped with an in-house designed and constructed shiplift and transfer system. The shiplift, along with multiple dry and wet berths enables simultaneous construction and refit of multiple ships and submarines. Keeping up with the global best practises, Modular Construction with maximum outfitting at block stage, weather independent construction of ships under covered workshops and employment of multi-skilled trained workforce to meet stringent naval standards are undertaken.
L&T has also been a forerunner in the deployment of Shipbuilding 4.0 practises, reducing cycle time, increasing efficiency and monitoring projects effectively, besides setting benchmarks in workmen safety and well-being. This focus of the L&T yard was awarded the Golden Sword Award by the British Safety Council and made L&T the third shipyard\, globally to be awarded this coveted recognition.
Indigenous warship design plays a critical role in achieving indigenous warship construction in true sense. Towards this, L&T has set up a state-of-the-art Warship Design Centre at Chennai, which is fully equipped with latest software & associated digital tools. It has capabilities right from concept design to generation of production drawings from 3-D digital models. Analysis through Virtual Reality Studio helps optimise layouts in the 3D Model and thereafter error-free production drawings are extracted from the digital mock up. In line with modern methodology adopted by the global shipyards, L&T incorporates modularity at design stage itself. Deployment of ERP and PLM/PDM packages has proved to be major enablers towards timely and error free production.
Since the basic design onwards is carried out in-house, L&T built the unique flexibility to target and enhance the indigenous content (IC) in the vessels (within the limitations of Buyer Nominated Equipment) and balancing the potential risks at the same time. The increased IC and digital design not only helps building an extended Indian ecosystem of MSME/SMEs in keeping with Navy’s persistent efforts for self-reliance, it also enables lowering Life Cycle Cost of the warships over operational life including cost besides evolving feasibility of repairs, refits and upgrades in the digital domain before undertaking physical work on the vessel and complete it expeditiously.
In the underwater platforms domain as well, L&T holds some of the unique capabilities in design and production of platform specific equipment, systems and wares that have remained being imported for other platform projects in India. Leveraging the learnings of these ventures, L&T has designed and developed an in-house special ops diesel-electric midget submarine called the SOV400. The SOV400 offers best value for money, particularly for small navies with limited defence budgets, providing credible deterrence capability when pitted against powerful hegemonic neighbours.
A multi-role submarine, SOV400 is primarily meant for deployment and recovery of special forces while being submerged up to 40m. Its uniquely designed lock-in/lock-out system enables quick release and recovery of marine commandos, while submerged. Two 4-men Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDV) carried on either side of the submarine can insert the divers deep inside enemy coastlines. In lieu of the SDVs, the SOV can also carry ammunition and special equipment in two commando containers.
The SOV is fitted with twin torpedo tubes that can launch heavyweight torpedoes for attacks in shallow waters or in self-defence. A modern conformal array sonar and advanced radio-electronic sensors for detection, surveillance, communication and interception provide tactical information for the command through an integrated combat management system.
All 67 vessels constructed by L&T till date – against four MoD contracts and an export contract involving five vessels to be built in India and enabling the friendly country to indigenously build the remaining seven with complete materiel package delivered by L&T – are designed in-house, built and delivered ahead of contractual schedules. In addition, various refits and repairs of the vessels are also undertaken, providing Through Life Support. The availability of shiplift means ready availability of dry docking facilities, which is important to meet the customer requirements.
The creation of a Shipyard with world class shipbuilding infrastructure was made by L&T with an aspiration of becoming a frontline technology driven Warship builder. However, until recent years the capital programmes for Warship acquisition remained nominated to Defence PSUs while allowing competitive bidding only for the Auxiliary vessels. This has caused the feast and famine scenario in the Indian War Ship building in-spite of efficient execution, cost efficiencies and impeccable track record of delivery by L&T.
The swollen order book of the Govt sector also leveraged their position effectively with lower overheads, volume buying efficiencies and nil/negligible asset servicing costs for assets funded through the Consolidated Funds of India. Some of these uneven playing fields remain to be resolved until the Govt takes cognisance of Private investments on par with national assets and must be enabled with level playing field to perform and service the assets invested through public funds (Consolidated funds of India).
While the spirit and intent of the Indian Navy being a Builder’s Navy holds high, budget constraints have pushed the Navy to seek more and more force multiplier technologies to be able to perform the growing tasks with less at hand. This is enabled through disruptive and new age technologies. L&T is thus committed to and making investments in unmanned domains to develop technologies and products such as Unmanned/Autonomous Surface vessels, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (high endurance), Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, platform independent SWARM UAVs, underwater targets, drone detection and neutralisation (soft and hard kill), predictive maintenance using AI and exploiting IPMS, Electric propulsion technology being significant amongst others.
With various ongoing and future acquisition programmes of the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, L&T is uniquely positioned and committed to offer end-to-end defence shipbuilding solutions with in-house design and engineering, world-class shipyard infrastructure and impeccable track record of delivering quality defence ships ahead of schedule.
