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