At the Defence Acquisitions Council (DAC) meeting chaired by Defence Minister MrRajnath Singh on 21 January 2020, two Indian ‘strategic partners’ (SP) have been identified, being Mazagon Dockyards Limited (MDL) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) in which programme, six conventional submarines in India will be built under P-75I, for an estimated Rs50,000 crore. The original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are Rubin Design Bureau (Russia), Naval Group-DCNS (France), ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (Germany), Navantia (Spain) and Daewoo (South Korea).
The P-75I project was initially given its AoN in November 2007 but has taken over a decade since, with certain SPs and OEMs since having withdrawn from the competition. The Indian partners will have to set up dedicated manufacturing lines in partnership with one of the OEMs, and the Navy may opt to manufacturer six more submarines under the project. In a statement, the government said the DACs decisions are “in keeping with the mandate given to the Chief of Defence Staff and the newly-constituted Department of Military Affairs to promote use of indigenous hardware by the Services’. This was the first DAC meeting after the post was created, when also other project including EW Systems for the Army and trawl assemblies for T-72/T-90 approved for de-mining operations.
While these Indian companies were shortlisted for their capability to integrate systems, expertise in shipbuilding domain and the financial strength, the foreign OEMs were judged primarily on their submarine design, which had to meet the Navy’s Qualitative Requirements and the Transfer of Technology and Indigenous Content criteria.