New Delhi, Dec 11: India is planning to issue a
Request for Proposals for construction of six new
diesel-electric submarines in India by the middle of next year.
"The issuance of RFP for the submarines under P-75 (I)
is envisaged in mid-2009," Defence Minister A K Antony said
while replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha yesterday.
Antony said the new submarines would be built
indigenously on an imported design and the partners would be
chosen on a multi-vendor basis.
"The submarines will be built on an imported design with
an overseas collaborator to be selected on multi-vendor
basis," he said.
Commenting on the measures taken by the government to
ensure on-schedule delivery of imported weapon systems, the
Minister said: "Necessary provisions are included in contracts
to ensure that defence equipments are received as per agreed
delivery schedule and negotiated price and other contractual
term and conditions."
He said there was a clause in the contract regarding levy
of Liquidated Damages (LD) in case of delay in delivery of
equipment.
Replying to another question, the minister said Russia,
United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Israel were
the major exporters of military hardware to India.
He said the import option for procuring defence
equipment was exercised when it became necessary to procure
items with in definite time frame on operational grounds to
bridge the capability gap and when the equipment could not be
procured indigenously.
Trishul missile proposal foreclosed
The government has said that
the Trishul missile programme of the DRDO was foreclosed due
to its inability to meet certain critical operational
requirements of the Indian Air Force (IAF).
Defence Minister A K Antony the told Rajya Sabha
yesterday that the missile served as a technology demonstrator
and the expertise acquired with the technologies developed
during design and development phase of Trishul Missile System
were being utilised for developing state-of-the-art short
range surface-to-air-missile system.
"The proposal for Trishul system was foreclosed due to
its inability to meet certain critical operational
requirements," Antony said, replying to a question from a
member.
He also said the Defence Ministry had signed a contract
with Rafael company of Israel to procure low-level quick
reaction missile system for the IAF.
To another question on the 'Arjun' main battle tank, the
government said the tank was not tampered with during any
trial and reliability tests were carried out systematically by
the army with successful results.
He also said there was no proposal from the DRDO, which
developed 'Arjun', to inquire into the whole episode of
"tampering" during its testing.
On the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Antony said the IAF
had already placed a commercial order with Hindustan
Aeronautics Limited for procuring 20 aircraft.
He said the Full Scale Engineering Development (FSED)
Phase-1 of the LCA was sanctioned in 1993 only for technology
development.
Later, in November 2001, FSED Phase-2 was sanctioned for
manufacturing of additional prototypes and eight limited
series production aircraft.
"Decision was taken to change to Open System
Architecture for avionics and change over to 'R73-E' Missile
from R60 to make the aircraft more advanced and contemporary.
Bureau Report