NEW DELHI: Surya, the Navy's first indigenous fleet support ship, hit the water on Tuesday after years of delay. Once inducted, it will let warships refuel and rearm at sea and stay deployed longer across the Indian Ocean.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched the 44,000-tonne vessel at Hindustan Shipyard Ltd (HSL) in Visakhapatnam, where he also laid the keel of the fifth ship. All five are being built under a Rs 19,000-crore contract inked with the state-run shipyard in Aug 2023.
The FSS are essentially floating logistics hubs. They will carry fuel, water, ammunition and stores for replenishment at sea, allowing warships to stay on station without breaking deployment to return to harbour. Each will also have first-line maintenance facilities, a helicopter deck and self-defence systems.
The capability is critical as the Navy sustains mission-based deployments across the IOR, from the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal and the approaches to the Malacca Strait. China's expanding naval presence adds urgency.
The Navy's dedicated replenishment fleet remains small, with the Italian-built INS Deepak and INS Shakti, inducted in 2011, among its mainstays.
Singh said a Navy operating far from home for long periods needs not just warships but logistics, maintenance and sustained support, which the FSS will provide.
A launch is when a ship's hull enters the water for the first time, marking the end of its main construction. Surya will now be fitted with its machinery, replenishment gear and weapon systems, followed by sea trials. Deliveries are due to begin from mid-2027.
The project has been in the works for over a decade. HSL first tied up with South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries, which was dropped in 2018, and then with a Turkish consortium led by Anadolu Shipyard, selected in 2019. That plan was put on hold amid tensions with Ankara over its support for Pakistan and HSL eventually terminated all agreements with the Turkish firms. The Navy, meanwhile, has twice moved to lease a product tanker to refuel its warships at sea.
The last fleet tanker built in India, INS Aditya, was due in 1991 but commissioned only in 2000. The FSS programme is thus a test of India's ability to build critical naval auxiliaries at scale and on schedule. Singh flagged as much, asking HSL to become "a benchmark for quality, productivity and timely delivery".
"Self-reliance is an important milestone, but global competitiveness is the next big leap," he said, adding that Indian shipyards must match the world's best on cost, technology and reliability. India's goal, he said, was to go beyond self-reliance and emerge as a global maritime power.
The minister also inaugurated an upgraded slipway that allows HSL to build ships of up to 45,000 DWT and a 300-tonne Goliath crane for heavier block construction.