The Silent Disservice: Submarines and the Limits of India's Indigenization Model

The Plan That Was Meant to End the Cycle

In 1999, India's Cabinet Committee on Security approved a thirty-year submarine construction programme intended to solve a problem that had been building for more than a decade. The Indian Navy's conventional submarine fleet was shrinking, several boats were approaching retirement, and replacements were not arriving fast enough.

Vice Admiral A.K. Chatterji's plan called for twenty-four submarines built in sequence: six boats under one foreign design, six under another, and twelve more drawing increasingly on Indian design and manufacturing experience.

The concept was straightforward. Shipyards would keep building, design teams would stay together, and each programme would leave behind a larger pool of engineers, welders, planners, and suppliers than the one before it. However, the concern was not hypothetical.

During the late 1980s, Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL) built two German-designed Type 209/1500 submarines under a technology-transfer agreement with Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft. The arrangement was expected to continue until allegations of illegal commissions surfaced in 1989. The option for two additional boats was then cancelled.

By the mid-1990s, submarine construction at MDL had largely stopped. Workshops that had been established for the program sat unused. Experienced personnel moved elsewhere or retired. When work resumed years later under Project 75, many of the practical lessons from the Type 209 programme had to be recovered, reconstructed, or learned again.

A generation later, the numbers are uncomfortably familiar. The decommissioning of INS Sindhughosh in December 2025 reduced the conventional submarine fleet to levels comparable to those that prompted the 1999 plan in the first place. Project 75(I), conceived partly to prevent another break in production, is unlikely to deliver its first boat before the early 2030s. Some assessments place induction closer to the middle of the decade.

The gap between the last Scorpène entering service and the first P-75(I) submarine joining the fleet may ultimately span most of ten years.

More than twenty-five years on, India has built submarines, expanded industrial participation, and acquired new capabilities. The navy nevertheless finds itself confronting familiar challenges.

A Long-Awaited Breakthrough

In February 2026, after more than two decades of approvals, cancellations, re-tendering exercises, disqualifications, and negotiations, India concluded price talks with Germany's ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) for six advanced diesel-electric submarines under Project 75(I). The Cost Negotiation Committee settled on a figure between Rs 66,000 and 70,000 crore, roughly US$8-9 billion.

In April, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh visited TKMS's shipyard in Kiel, the first trip by an Indian defence minister to Germany in seven years. His German counterpart publicly stated that a contract could be signed within three months. By May, the Union Finance Ministry had cleared the proposal.

Under the arrangement, TKMS will serve as design authority and technology partner, transferring key AIP-related technologies. Indigenous content is expected to increase from about 45 percent on the first submarine to 60 percent on the sixth. Navy officials view the program as a step toward a future class designed and built in India, while giving DRDO's developing fuel-cell AIP program access to operational experience that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.

The negotiations also showed that India's procurement system can occasionally work to its advantage. TKMS's October 2025 stock market listing gave New Delhi unusual leverage: a company newly accountable to shareholders needed to demonstrate future orders. India used that position to push the original MDL-TKMS bid down from more than Rs 1.2 lakh crore to roughly Rs 60,000-70,000 crore.

Indian negotiators also benefited from lessons learned elsewhere. Problems reported by the Hellenic Navy with Type 214 fuel-cell AIP systems reinforced the importance of proven performance. That experience informed India's decision to require sea-proven AIP technology, a standard that ultimately led to Navantia's disqualification in January 2025.

P-75(I) is closer to contract signature than ever before. Yet the first submarine is unlikely to enter service before 2033, with the sixth expected around 2038. India has reached this stage before: contracts signed, approvals secured, timelines announced. The harder task has always been turning those plans into an operational fleet.

How Continuity Broke Down

On 12 July 1999, the Cabinet Committee on Security approved the "Project for Series Construction of Submarines for the Indian Navy and Acquisition of National Competence in Submarine Building." Vice Admiral A.K. Chatterji's plan envisioned two parallel production lines, each building six submarines under separate technology-transfer arrangements over twelve years. The experience gained would then support the construction of twelve indigenous submarines through 2030.

The objective was straightforward. By 2030, India would field at least twenty modern submarines while developing the industrial and design expertise needed to sustain the fleet without relying entirely on foreign suppliers.

The plan reflected a lesson learned the hard way. During the late 1980s, MDL built two Type 209/1500 submarines under a technology-transfer agreement with HDW. After corruption allegations emerged in 1989, the remaining boats were cancelled, HDW was blacklisted, and MDL's submarine facilities sat idle. Much of the workforce dispersed and valuable experience was lost. Many naval officers later referred to the period between 1995 and 2005 as a "lost decade."

When construction resumed under Project 75, it often felt less like a continuation than a restart. The 1999 plan was designed to avoid another break in production by ensuring that skills, personnel, and infrastructure carried forward from one programme to the next.

That continuity never fully materialised. Phase One was meant to conclude by 2012. The P-75 contract was signed only in 2005, and the first Scorpène, INS Kalvari, entered service in December 2017. The sixth and final boat, INS Vagsheer, was commissioned in January 2025, nearly two decades after the contract was signed.

The submarines arrived, but the broader ambition proved harder to realise. More than 60 percent of each boat remained imported, and later naval assessments suggested that the technology-transfer provisions delivered limited design knowledge that could be applied to a future indigenous class.

P-75(I) was intended to overlap with the Scorpène programme so that MDL's workforce and facilities remained continuously engaged. Instead, the first P-75(I) submarine is unlikely to enter service until at least seven years after the last Scorpène. During that period, experienced personnel will retire, move on, or shift to other projects.

Former Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash has argued that India's defence procurement system often rewards procedural caution over timely execution. The HDW programme collapsed amid corruption allegations. P-75(I), by contrast, became entangled in layers of oversight, compliance requirements, and procurement safeguards. Different causes produced a similar outcome: interruptions in production and a fleet that grew more slowly than planned.

The lesson was learned. Then the same mistake was made again, more slowly, and with considerably more paperwork.

Why It Took Three Decades

Three causes explain why P-75(I) took nearly three decades to reach contract stage. Only one of them is structural.

The primary cause: requirement creep as the price of technology-transfer ambition

By the time P-75(I) received formal approval in 2010, it was already behind schedule. A second approval followed in 2014, but the program had become more demanding. The Navy required all bidders to offer a submarine equipped with a sea-proven air-independent propulsion (AIP) system, reflecting the operational advantage of remaining submerged for weeks rather than days.

The requirement narrowed an already limited market. Russia, France's Naval Group, and other potential bidders declined to participate, citing liability provisions, technology-transfer demands, and integration requirements. Of the five contenders that entered, three were eventually disqualified because their AIP systems had not been proven at sea. Navantia's bid was removed in January 2025 on those grounds, and subsequent objections from its Indian partner, L&T, led to further technical reviews and delays.

This prompted the creation of a three-member technical oversight committee before proceedings could resume. The objections may have been a competitive stalling tactic. Either way, the underlying vulnerability followed directly from making sea-proven AIP a disqualifying criterion in a market where few systems could meet it: a program where a single technical compliance dispute suspends proceedings for months.

The commercial consequences were predictable. The program's 2018 benchmark stood at Rs 43,000 crore. The MDL-TKMS bid opened above Rs 1.2 lakh crore before negotiations reduced it to roughly Rs 66,000-70,000 crore, still around sixty percent above the approved baseline. By insisting on extensive technology transfer and proven technology, the Navy reduced competition while raising expectations for what the programme would deliver.

The original 2018 benchmark was Rs 43,000 crore. The MDL-TKMS bid initially exceeded Rs 1.2 lakh crore before negotiations reduced it to Rs 66,000-70,000 crore, still about sixty percent above the approved baseline. Part of that increase reflects the cost of securing a deeper technology transfer from a field narrowed to a single qualified bidder. The earlier Scorpène programme delivered six submarines but left much of the design and production knowledge abroad.

This time, the Navy was prepared to pay more for a transfer it considered more meaningful. The same dynamic affected the timeline. A program built around technologies and expertise that India does not yet possess was always likely to move at the pace of qualification, testing, and compliance.

That approach reflected lessons from P-75. The Scorpène programme produced six submarines but left India with limited design authority and continued dependence on imported systems. P-75(I) sought something more substantial. The result was a more expensive and slower procurement process, but also one with a greater chance of transferring knowledge that India did not previously possess.

The second cause: what P-75 left behind

The original Scorpène contract was supposed to give India enough technological know-how to support future indigenous submarine design. That never fully materialised. More than sixty percent of each boat remained imported, and the Navy later stressed that the technology transfer under P-75(I) had to be "real and actionable", an implicit acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the earlier programme.

Those lessons shaped the next competition. The Navy demanded deeper technology transfer and stricter technical standards. Fewer foreign suppliers could meet those requirements, costs rose, and the program took longer to move forward. The result was a familiar trade-off: India sought more knowledge and greater control over future submarine construction but paid for it in time and money.

The third cause: bandwidth competition

Officials partly attributed the delayed start of cost negotiations to the government's focus on Operation Sindoor. That explanation is reasonable. A government managing an active military crisis will inevitably divert attention and resources elsewhere. But Operation Sindoor delayed negotiations by months, not decades. It cannot account for the twenty-seven years between the 1999 submarine plan and the expected 2026 contract signing.

What the ranking reveals

Indigenization is the one factor that links both the cost increase and the programme's extended timeline. Acquiring genuine design and manufacturing expertise through technology transfer has pushed the contract roughly sixty percent above its 2018 baseline, while years of delay have opened a gap in MDL's submarine production schedule. Supporters of Aatmanirbharta may see these costs as the price of long-term self-reliance. The costs are real nonetheless.

The LVM3 Lesson

The submarine story looks singular until you set it next to the rocket that launched India's moon missions.

Development of the LVM3 began in the early 2000s, with a first launch initially targeted for 2009–2010. Instead, the vehicle entered service seven years late. Part of the delay traced back to a disrupted technology-transfer agreement. In 1991, ISRO signed a deal with the Soviet Glavkosmos for cryogenic propulsion technology and engines. US pressure under Missile Technology Control Regime concerns led Russia to withdraw the transfer component in 1993 while still supplying a limited number of engines. The hardware arrived; the underlying know-how did not. ISRO spent more than a decade developing indigenous cryogenic capability before the CE-20 engine reached operational reliability.

India sought technology transfer from a foreign partner. External pressure severed the knowledge component while permitting limited hardware supply. India was forced into an extended indigenous development path it had not originally planned for.

The delay was the predictable cost of absorbing a genuinely new technology class without the industrial infrastructure or accumulated failure experience that mature program carry forward from earlier generations. The submarine program carries the same shape.

What happened after that absorption phase is the point the submarine literature consistently fails to raise. As of December 2025, LVM3 had accumulated nine successful launches with a 100 percent success rate. The program that arrived seven years late, after sanctions and forced indigenization and a national lunar mission placed on its shoulders, became one of the more reliable heavy-lift vehicles in Asia and entered the commercial satellite market, ferrying international payloads at costs well below Western equivalents. The absorption phase was expensive and slow. What followed was a decade of disciplined, reliable execution.

There are, however, important differences. LVM3's principal challenge centred on cryogenic propulsion. Submarine construction requires the integration of hull design, propulsion, combat systems, AIP technology, and acoustic management, with each element affecting the others. Whether submarine programmes can achieve the same trajectory of delayed development followed by sustained execution remains uncertain. India has one example where a difficult technology acquisition process eventually produced lasting capability.

Whether the submarine sector follows a similar path will only become clear over the next generation of programmes.

The Strategic Consequences

China operates six Jin-class SSBNs equipped with JL-3 missiles with an estimated range of 10,000 kilometres. India commissioned its third Arihant-class SSBN, INS Aridhaman, in April 2026, bringing its operational fleet to three boats. On paper, the gap appears manageable.

In practice, sustaining a continuous at-sea deterrent remains difficult. Satellite imagery from January 2026 showed all four Indian SSBN hulls berthed at Visakhapatnam simultaneously. Maintaining one submarine on patrol requires a rotation of boats in training, transit, and maintenance. A fleet of three operational SSBNs can support that cycle, but with little margin for unexpected repairs or extended refits.

INS Arihant was sortied during the 2019 Pulwama-Balakot crisis as a signal of resolve. SSBN deployments were absent from reporting of the May 2025 crisis, despite considerable Indian naval operations. Whether that absence reflected maintenance status, deliberate strategic choice, or operational unreadiness is not publicly known. The ambiguity is itself the point.

The challenge is compounded by missile range. The K-4, carried by later Arihant variants, has an estimated range of 3,500 kilometres. Reaching targets deep inside China requires patrol areas in the northern Bay of Bengal, waters where Chinese naval activity is becoming more frequent. That places greater pressure on the survivability that underpins a credible second-strike capability.

These constraints stem less from nuclear doctrine than from the pace at which the supporting force structure has developed.

The Cost of Learning

DRDO's indigenous AIP system, long presented as the centrepiece of India's submarine indigenization effort, has yet to achieve sea-proven status. Instead of equipping P-75(I), it is now slated for retrofit into the existing Kalvari class. The next generation of submarines will use German AIP supplied by TKMS. Whether DRDO's system eventually matures into a viable option for P-76 remains uncertain.

That outcome reflects the realities of technology absorption as much as any specific institutional shortcoming. The same requirements that narrowed the field, disqualified several contenders, and extended the competition were intended to ensure that India acquired more than assembled submarines.

If successful, they could leave the Navy and industry with capabilities that previous technology-transfer programmes failed to deliver. The costs, however, have been substantial: a contract roughly 60 percent above the 2018 benchmark and a production gap of seven to nine years between submarine programs.

The comparison with LVM3 is instructive but imperfect. India's rocket programme endured years of delays before reaching a period of sustained success. Submarines present a different challenge. They combine propulsion, combat systems, stealth requirements, and complex integration work in a platform whose failures are difficult to observe and often impossible to recover from. Whether the experience gained through P-75(I) will shorten the path to P-76 remains an open question.

What Comes After P-75(I)

By the time the first P-75(I) submarine enters service, more than three decades will have passed since India approved its 1999 submarine construction plan. During that period, the Navy commissioned six Scorpènes, expanded its strategic submarine fleet, and made indigenous production a central defence priority. Yet the challenge identified in 1999 remains familiar: sustaining submarine construction from one generation to the next without losing the workforce, skills, and experience built along the way.

LVM3 offers a useful, if imperfect, comparison. India's space programme spent years overcoming the consequences of interrupted technology transfer and difficult indigenous development before achieving a sustained record of successful launches. Whether submarine construction follows a similar path remains uncertain. Modern submarines are among the most complex systems any defence industry attempts to build.

The TKMS agreement may prove to be a turning point. Equally, it may become one stage in a longer cycle of delays and relearning. The answer will lie beyond the contract itself. If P-76 enters production without another prolonged gap, if design teams remain intact, and if future programmes spend less time rebuilding lost expertise, the long delays and costs associated with P-75(I) will be easier to justify.

For now, India has secured six submarines and access to capabilities its naval planners have sought for decades. Whether those gains endure will become clear only when the next generation of boats begins to take shape.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of CNAWS.

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