Photos: Russkies tinker with Gorshkov

It’s been reported that the Russkies want the Indian government to put $200 million in cold cash down immediately for the Gorshkov refit to continue. The Russkies have no money. Tells you a little about how they’d ever support stuff we buy from them. Here are a couple of photos, one of a recent visit to Sevmash by a government team (the hapless Gorshkov sprawled in the backdrop), and another of workers welding new steel plates that will be used in the refit.

Photos ©Copyright Sevmash

43 thoughts on “Photos: Russkies tinker with Gorshkov”

  1. When was that group photo taken, Shiv?

    I heard about their latest demand. But has the delivery date extended even further?

  2. a question to all visitors

    if we had gorshkov in our own shipyards in india ,r v able to convert gorky into aircraft carrier and at what amount of money

  3. For those who wonder what will it take to make a Gorshkov in an Indian shipyard the answer is not too far.Just monitor the progress of the Air Defence Ship being constructed ‘indigeniously’ at the Cochin Shipyard(CSL).Compare the costs and the man-hours with that of Gorshkov.Though the ADS will be a small carrier,it will be interesting to watch it take shape and it will lead us to many answers – about our engineering capability,the notoriety of our labour practises,the umpteen changes in design and equipment and not to mention cost escalation!The simple fact of life is – we have the money but we do not have the experience and expertise of the Russians.They are tigers when it comes to shipbuilding.Their designs of the 1960S are still in use in our Navy.There is something about the steel that they make – it keeps the ships and submarines going for years.Their heavy engineering is matched only by the Germans.And now their combat software is also among the best in the world.After all they export warships everywhere across the globe.Therefore, it is easy to laugh at the bankruptsy of their shipyards but a tough act to match up to their expertise,acquired over the difficult years of the Cold War.The IN may claim to have transited from being a ‘buyers navy’ to a ‘builders navy’ but the ‘building’ part is only restricted to creating the hulls and integrating the systems.Most of the weaponry and combat systems come from the Russians.Till this is resolved the IN can never call itself a ‘builders navy’ in the true sense.

  4. to anon 9.38

    its anon at 7.46

    u r right

    i wrote that comment to tell that v do not have the same capability to
    do such massive work but russia has such capability

    and they themselves have said this work was largly underestimated

    and v shud stop criticising russia over gorky cuz converting gorky into
    aircraft carrier means converting old ship into
    a new ship and its takies time

    cuz making newer ship is easier than this task

  5. To [email protected]: The reason why the Indian Navy's Russia-supplied warships are afloat several years after their commissioning is the successive refits carried out by Indian shipyards and naval dockyards. Indian shipyards will have no problem with matching the productivity levels of their Western or Russian counterparts IF ONLY they are allowed to be freed from the shackles of the Ministry of Defence, i.e. stop being MoD-owned defence PSUs and instead become publicly listed entities (like L & T) that are free to raise the much-needed capital for their modernisation and skills/hull fabrication capability upgradation from the international and national capital markets. Being totally dependent on the MoD for capital expenditure means being held hostage to the MoD's time-table for raising and disbursement of funds. This consequently prevents the PSU shipyard from undertaking crucial decisions and is the principal reason why these shipyards have been unable to forge strategic industrial partnerships with the world's leading shipyards. For instance, if Cochin Shipyard Ltd (belonging to the Ministry of Shipping) wants to stay as a viable shipbuilding yard, then it is imperative that it enters into a long-term strategic industrial partnership with Fincantieri, with the MoD in turn committing itself itself to this partnership by ordering not only the 37,000-tonne Integrated Aircraft carrier and its future enhanced variants (2 or 3), but also placing orders for fulfilling the Navy's longstanding requirement for at least three LHDs. As long as there is no such available military-industrial roadmap aimed at making them publicly-listed and globally competitive corporate entities, the defence PSU shipyards will continue to be at the mercy of ad-hoc decision-making by the MoD mandarins.

  6. @Prasun

    Do you have any updates on ATV and the new A/C construction @ Cochin? Is there any prospect of it being nuclear powered? Thanks.

  7. To [email protected]: Am working on a story on the ATV and various Indian vendor-companies involved in the ATV construction effort and will send to Shiv soon for uploading. But kindly note that as the name suggests, the ATV is primarily a technology demonstrator vessel with the DRDO being the programme coordinator. One must not automatically presume that this single ATV will straightaway become an operational SSBN. Only after the DRDO has proven the ATV's hull design and propulsion system's integrity will the Govt of India sanction funding for a nuclear-powered submarine fleet comprising both an SSBN and at least two SSNs. I say this because if one assumes that India has already gained technological proficiency for fabricating nuclear-powered submarines, then undertaking design and construction of diesel-electric submarines should be far simpler. Yet as we all know now, even for fabricating such SSKs (like the Class 209/Type 1500 and more recently the Scorpene) we have sought foreign industrial partnerships. You therefore have to view and analyse the ATV project and its R & D efforts from that perspective.

    As far as construction of the Integrated Aircraft Carrier (IAC) goes, things are proceeding with hull fabrication. The high-strength steel for this is coming from Russia. The deliveries of the consignments had fallen behinbd schedule last year. No, it won't be nuclear-powered. Four GE/HAL-built LM-2500 marine industrial gas turbines will used instead. The IPMS, integrated damage control and propulsion control systems will come from Bangalore-based division of L-3 MAPPS. The principal on-board radar will be the ELTA-built EL/M-2248 MF-STAR and of course both the Barak-1s and Barak-2s will be on-board, as per the computer-generated image officially released by the Navy's Naval Design Bureau. Several other network-centric systems will form part of the IAC's combat management system and various related offers from Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, EADS and BAE Systems are now being evaluated by Navy HQ.

  8. @Prasun

    Really? Hey pls come out with it fast! And some pictures please!! I highly it’ll be a tech demonstrator. If you notice most Indian defence products have codenames before they’re launched, e.g. LCH, LOH, ALH, LCA, MRTA etc. I agree it’ll be the building block for building bigger Indian subs but technology demonstrator; I highly doubt. And you’ve to understand this is not the first time India is leapforwarding in technology. We saw in the LCH and ALH, where HAL, an assembly company managed to produce pretty good products on par with current trends. Why not in this case too?

    Regarding AC, I heard that SAIL has managed to invent a new type of hull steel, which will be used in future projects. Any updates on that? Sad though it won’t be nuke powered.

  9. @Prasun

    Please note that tech demonstrators are usually not used / inducted but only serves as a testbed for future models. More like a prototype. I quite sure ATV will be put to service.

    Of course, I’m amateur. Correct if wrong.

  10. Friend anon 2.29 PM thanks for your lead.I am anon 9.38 PM.If you’d read your reference carefully you’d realize that the problems encountered by Kuznetsov were more financial than technical.She was constructed just about the time when the USSR was breaking up.Imagine the budgetary problems she must have gone through.Yet you need to acknowledge the fact that the Russians built her in 10 flat years.Nowhere it is mentioned that the incompetence of the shipyards delayed her becoming operational.Moreover,the proof of Russian shipbulding is in your homeports to see – the three new Talwar class Krivak frigates are swinging in our Navy – shoulder to shoulder with the five vintage Kashin/Rajput class destroyers bought way back in the 1980S.Not to mention the numerous small ships of Russian origin.

  11. some where prasun has said that

    RUSSIA ISN’T helping in making of ATV moreover he said hulls for ATV
    R OF INDIAN ORIGIN NOT OF AKULA

    I DON’T BELIEVE IN THIS

  12. Dear [email protected]: One needs to put India's core technological competencies in aircraft manufacturing and submarine-building in the proper perspective. HAL's tryst with licenced aircraft-manufacturing began in the late 1950s and helicopter-manufacturing in the mid-1960s. Therefore, HAL had almost 30 years of experience prior to embarking on the design and development of homegrown helicopters like the Dhruv ALH, LCH and LOH. In contrast, India acquired the expertise for building (mind you, not designing them from scratch) submarines in the late 1980s with the Class 209/Type 1500 SSKs. It was only by the late 1990s that a proper functional design office was set up by the DRDO (and not by the Navy's Design Bureau) for the ATV technology demonstrator. Hull fabrication by L & T began only after 2001. And mind you, the operational SLBM on board the ATV will have to be a 8,500km-range ballistic missile variant of the baseline Agni-3, whose requirement was identified and revealed last year in an article penned by Admiral (ret'd) Arun Prakash. All in all, there are several other technological hurdles to be overcome and therefore, a more realistic timeframe for an operationally ready and armed version of the ATV technology demonstrator will be between 2015-2018.
    As regards high-strength hull steel, it is not SAIL, but MIDHANI
    that was responsible for developing it. SAIL is the production authority.

  13. @Prasun

    Thanks for patiently answering me. Please help further feed my curiosity:

    Can you please provde the source where Arun Prakash demands the range of the SLBMs fitted to be 8500km? DRDO has not even developed such a technology. Their Agni-3 only reaches 3500km and the intended SLBM, Sagarika is a mere 700km. In fact Agni-5, the new one in development is only gonna be around 5000km. I heard that US pressure on the faggot-manmohan government has caused parliament to delay approval on development of ICBM (denied by the government however) although the technology is within reach by DRDO.

    Unconfirmed reports place ATV’s displacement at 5000 tonnes (correct me if I’m wrong). How can a 5000 tonne submarine carry a formidable force of ICBMs? Don’t you feel 5000 tonnes should be more suitable as a nuke attack submarine?

    I agree that a more practical date for ATV to be fielded (with the missiles) would be around 2015; but you don’t call that a technology demonstrator. From what I know technology demonstrators are used to demonstrate a specific technology, but at the end of the day a better variant based on what was learnt would be built, and the former discarded. I mean of course India will perfect the art of submarine construction on the ATV, but it will be a production model by the end of the day.

  14. To [email protected]: The article By Admiral (ret’d) Arun Prakash I was referring to asppeared in one of the issues of FORCE in the first quarter of last year. It was not not a demand by the Admiral. Far from it, he was simply visualising an operational scenario that would require a realistic, credible and survivable sea-based nuclear deterrent in the event of a potential conflict between China and India in future. Now, turning to the Agni, the DRDO does have plans for steadily increasing the range of the missile, be it the Agni-3 or Agni-5 or even the yet-to-be-revealed Agni-8. The reason the Agni-3 and Agni-5 are now public knowledge items is because their deployment is land-based (road/rail-mobile) and is easily achievable with India’s existing transportation infrastructure and the Strategic Forces Command’s existing nuclear command-and-control assets/procedures. But when it comes to Agni-8, the situation changes because the host platform for this missile (the SSBN) is not yet ready. Only once the ATV technology demonstrator successfully validates ALL the operational parameters (hull integrity, propulsion system, and SLBM fire-control system) as specified by the end-user (the Indian Navy), will financial sanction be accorded for fabricating an operational SSBN. And it is only then that concurrent sanction will be accorded for developing and producing the 8,500km-range SLBM. This process is identical to that adopted for the Tejas LCA and Arjun Mk1 MBT programmes.
    Reverting back to the ATV, since it is a technology demonstrator, it will have on board only the bare compartment modules required for engineering/operational tests and evaluation. Thus, there will not be the full complement of SLBM launch tubes, but just a cluster of two, four or eight, depending on what the Indian Navy requires. Therefore, I would not be surprised if the ATV’s displacement figure is lower than that for the operational SLBM. The ATV will therefore be employed primarily as a testbed for testing and validating various technologies that the Indian Navy will be deploying for the very first time. The ATV’s design and dimensions will therefore in no way be identical to the operational SSBN, which will displace at least 12,000 tonnes.
    The main reason why any average discerning person often gets confused is due to rumours about the Russians supplying India with all the required technologies/expertise for fabricatinbg the ATV. And when the Navy’s plans for leasing one Akula 2 SSGN were confirmed early last December, everyone automatically assumed that there must be at least some physical or technological linkage between the ATV and Akula-2. It is all such assumptions that serve to reinforce the belief that the solitary ATV will automatically become the operational SSBN.
    In my forthcoming article on the ATV programme I will clearly identify the various industrial partnerships forged between Indian OEMs and their foreign counterparts for developing and building various components of the ATV and only then it will emerge that all earlier remarks about substantial Russian design/technical assistance to the DRDO for the ATV project, were all ill-founded and speculative.

  15. to prasun

    its better not to talk about SSBN

    v don’t need SSBN immidiately us but SSN and thats the point

    and what about akula2 induction

  16. why can’t india pay just $200m to russia, when they are ready to pay upto $100-billion to usa for the nuclear deal ???

    Double standards !!!!

  17. @Prasun

    One last thing sir: Since you’re quite well-versed with this kinda stuff, can you please share your comment(s) about a piece of speculation that came out some time ago about Manmohan’s givt unwilling to sanction ICMB development due to US pressure

    And if possible, please come out with an article on the Nirbhay missile if its updates are available to you. Of course after your ATV article 🙂

    Thanks

  18. @anon – 3:02 AM

    Why not? We are getting the scorpenes and a will be soom tendering for another new class of attack subs. And our Akulas are still pretty deadly.

    Right now we need a formidable nuclear force as a deterent to CHina and Pakistan. Remember during Kargil when Pakistan gave a nuclear scare? At that time we never had an edge against Pakistan’s nuclear force. A credible sea based arsenal would be the ULTIMATE deterent for any country planning to nuke India. That’s something we lack now. Remember we can buy attack subs from abroad (doesn’t need to be nuclear right now) but not ballistic missile subs. I suggest you read Sandip Unnithan’s article in India Today on the ATV project.

  19. To [email protected]: As you yourself said, these are mere speculations regarding the ICBM. The longest-range ballistic missile required as per the Draft Nuclear Doctrine is the SLBM and the R & D efforts by the DRDO are on track without any impediments.

    And kindly also note that just like the leasing of the Charlie-1 SSGN in the late 1980s, the current leasing of the Akula-2 SSGN is for training purposes only. If you carefully read the statement by the current CNS of IN early last December on the eve of Navy Day, you will recall that he clearly and specifically stated that the leased Akula-2 will be used solely for training IN personnel in operating nuclear-powered submarines and mastering the art of maintaining their serviceability and related safety procedures. Nowhere was it mentioned that the leased Akula-2 will be an operational combatant vessel. Simply put, it means that it will be employed only in precetime and in times of war it will NOT enter direct combat. It will be a non-combatant vessel and not take part in any hostilities. These were the jointly-agreed upon terms and conditions for the leasing agreement. That's why the CNS made it a point of emphasising the Akula-2's utility as ONLY a training platform. Therefore, let's not jump to any assumptions or conclusions about the Akula-2 being an integral part of India's sea-based nuclear deterrent.

    With regard to Pakistan giving India a nuclear scare (blackmail) in 1999 during Operation Vijay, these speculations were later refuted by Gen Musharraf himself in his autobiography when he stated that Pakistan's nuclear command-and-control system and its strategic forces command became operational only in 2001. All that happened was that a couple of M-9 and M-11 ballistic missile launchers were activated in the Deosai Plains in the Northern Areas. Nothing beyond that, as has been amply documented by historians on both sides of the border thus far.

  20. @Prasun

    Regarding the ICBM development, it was mere speculation but you have to understand that there’s usually no fire without smoke.

    Regarding Akula, please tell me which other country would be gracious enough to lend us a nuclear submarine in the first place, whatever the purpose. All I was saying is that the SLBMs are more pressing need for India because it cannot be purchased from any other country, in contrast to attack submarines.

    About Pakistan’s nuclear scare during the Kargil War, let’s not be bothered whether there was or not a nuclear ready force. As I wrote it was a “nuclear scare”. Both the M9 and M11 missiles you highlighted are nuclear capable, and in the height of the war (esp. when India’s ships were readying for a naval blockade) India (and even the US) were convinced that Pakistan was capable, and had the intention of carrying out a nuclear strike. That’s why India retaliated by moving its nuclear assets to Stage-3.

  21. Dear Max: I’ve never underestimated the graciousness of the Russians with regard to leasing the Akula-2 SSGN to India. All I did was make a factual statement about the Akula-2 SSGN being a much-valued training asset, and not a frontline asset to be employed during hostilities.
    With regard to the alleged nuclear flashpoint 1999, the question of nuclear escalation by either India or Pakistan did not arise at all simply because neither country had the survivable command-and-control procedures/systems/assets in place that are a must when even deliberating upon the use of WMDs. The distance between testing nuclear warheads and integrating them with credible means of delivery (ballistic/cruise missiles) and then operationalising them under a seamless, survivable and robust command-and-control system is a long and ardous one. Neither India nor Pakistan had ALL these components in place until 2001. This is now a well-acknowledged fact that first came out in the third quarter of 2002 during academic debates conducted under the auspices of the US National Defense University and the Brookings Institution.

  22. @Prasun

    Prithvi 1 was tested in 198X. It’s nuclear capable. Kargil happened in 1999. ~10 years later and still these compnonts weren’t in place? What took India so long Prasun, although India first tested a nuke bomb in the 70s? And how could both India and Pak be ready in the same time although there was a 20+ year gap between India’s forst test and Pak’s?

    Leaving that aside as you said those facts came out during the 3rd quarter of 2002. In the height of the war both countries were not aware of each other’s capability, and this created a nuclear scare between both countries. India may have felt Pakistan could have obtained missiles + warheads from China, although they never had them. What I’m stressing was there was a nuclear scare at that point, irrespective of what was deduced later on. Now as you say Pakistan is ready for a nuclear strike, which makes my point stronger for India to possess a credible sea-based nuclear deterent force.

    Sorry, I felt you were underestimating Russia’s kindness to lease us a nuke sub because you brought up the issue for no reason I could find! Of course the NPT doesn’t allow them to transfer a SSGN for combat purposes, but even by leasing for training purposes they were ‘bending the rules’.

    Cheers.

  23. TO [email protected]: The Prithvi was 'touted' by the DRDO as a nuclear-capable missile, but was never accepted as a credible delivery platform by either by the Army's Directorate General of Field Artillery, nor by the country's Strategic Forces Command simply because it could not be launched from the hinterland, well away from the engagement envelopes of hostile rocket artillery or tactical strike aircraft. That's why the Agni-1 was developed on a fast-track basis.
    Although India conducted an underground nuclear test in May 1974, this was just to prove the design validity of the various components of a functional nuclear device. The overall device itself was not miniaturised to fit into a dumb bomb-like casing, nor as a warhead to be delivered by any type of missile. On the other hand, the devices tested in May 1998 were designed and built as warheads as by then it had already been decided what their delivery systems would be (i.e. the Agni family of ballistic missiles). And it was only after the May 1998 Shatki-2 tests that India became a declared nuclear-weapons state, i.e. it was time to weaponise by merging the R & D efforts of the DRDO (for the missiles) and the DAE (for the warheads). Once you weaponise, you also must have an operational doctrine as well as assets required for using this weapon without any hitch, without which nuclear deterrence does not work.
    In short, to have a credible nuclear deterrent you first need to develop the technologies for both the warheads and their delivery means (stage 1), followed by integrating them (stage 2, or weaponisation), followed by making them operational (stage-3) by developing and deploying a robust and survivable command-and-control system. All these stages were not implemented simultaneously, but in tandem throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
    Pakistan, by contrast, went through all three stages between 1988 and 1998 simply due to easily available off-the-shelf components from China, which are required for deploying an operational nuclear deterrent. Only when this was amply demonstrated in late May 1998 did the US find out that the radioactive residue over Chagai was not that of a device using enriched uranium, but plutonium (that of course came from China). This in turn raises another question: how could this happen when throughout the 1970s and 1980s Dr A Q Khan's KRL was allegedly producing enriched uranium as the primary fissile material, and the PAEC did not have any in-country facility capable of producing plutonium until April 1998, when the China-supplied reactor in Chashma went on-line. It was this discovery by the US of China's blatant proliferation of WMDs that finally convinced the US national security establishment to be more objective in terms of appreciating India's compulsions for becoming an overt n-weapons state, and that also explains why the US became more sympathetic towards India in 1999 during OP Vijay and prevented China from ferrying in to Pakistan (from Chengdu in Sichuan province via the Karakoram Highway to the lower Hunza Valley) the n-warheads required for the M-9s and M-11s.

  24. @Prasun

    You mean Chinese aresholes intended to supply Pak with those M9 and M11 warheads?

    And friend, I’ve been observing you in other topics (esp about the submarine one) and you seem to be getting blown out of your mind arguing with certain qursters. At the rate you’re going you may breakdown at any time!! I would advise you stick yourself only to constructive discussions and ignore the rest.

    Cheers.

  25. to everyone

    how idiotic question prasun asks

    like he asked

    when rubber corrods ?
    —————————-
    simple ans. is rubber never corrodes but metal corrode

    he said mig31 isn’t net cent.
    ———————————
    simple ans is mig31 was the first aircraft to have net cent capability

    he called rubber tiles of sub welded panels

    he said FINCANTIERI bought AIP tech and production rights from centain firm
    ———————————–
    when i asked from which firm and who is that fool that will sell AIP production rights to FINCANTIERI

    he called better welding tech has been used agusta sub
    ————————————-
    simple ans. every sub making country has world class welding tech

    he tells that only double hull subs can sport rubber coatings
    ————————————–
    simple ans. all subs can sport rubber tiles single hull or double hull

    he says lada class and amur 1650 r two different subs
    ————————————-
    simple ans. they r same but export varient is called 160 amur class

    where is s800 sub and s1000 is just too small while lada class is in commission with russian navy

    he asked what is use of rubber tiles on a sub if they donn’t hav decisive advantage
    ———————————–
    sinple ans. he never went to cinema theatre also didn’t paid attention to sound absobers and never studied physics that these rubber tiles act as sound absorbers otherwise he wouldn’t ask this silly ouestion

  26. To [email protected]: Come, come, come, Max, don’t get too emotional with the mechanisms of our Chinese neighbours. Post-Chagai it was established by both the US, the EU and India beyond reasonable doubt by July 1998 that of the four devices (and not six as as claimed) that were tested on May 28 and May 30, two of them fizzled out and only the two tactical nuclear devices in warhead configuration that were supplied OFF-THE-SHELF by China actually exploded. And they emitted plutonium-based radioactive traces into the atmosphere. Till this day, the top brass of both the Indian armed forces and the DAE are of the firm belief that Pakistan till this day does not have a totally indigenously designed and fabricated nuclear warhead and its nuclear deterrent comprises just 12 tactical nuclear warheads that are kept in storage in Chengdu, China, and NOT Pakistan. In times of emergencies these warheads will be sent to the lower Hunza Valley for integrating them to the M-9/M-11/M-18 (Shaheen-2) ballistic missiles. Pakistan’s nuclear command-and-control centre is located deep inside the mountains in this Valley and in times of military emergencies an entire Mechanised Infantry Brigade of the PLA Army’s 2nd Artillery Corps will take over the functioning and security of this centre. In fact, this Brigade was spotted by US and Indian intelligence agencies moving into the Valley via the Karakoram Highway in May 2002 at the height of Operation Parakram. And you also must have observed that during the devastating earthquake in late 2005 which struck northern Pakistan in late 2005, NOT one, I repeat, NOT one TV camera or news agency was even allowed to cover the quake-related devastation in the Northern Areas. That area was a no-go, period. Now, what do all these things tell you?

    Regarding my responses to all these trolls, your advice is well taken. All I did was ask them in good faith what exactly explains the presence of salt water-caused corrosive patches that are clearly visible on the hull of any Amur 1650 SSK. Instead, these trolls, without understanding what I’ve asked, proceed to type down their PhD thesis on metal-based corrosion versus the bio-degradable characteristics of rubber! And all this time they choose to remain anonymous!

  27. @Prasun

    Wow wow so that’s the story.. but why keep it in Chengdu when it’s so far from Pakistan? I would like to read more on this. Can you please provide your source? These really seem new to me.

  28. To [email protected]: Chengdu was selected as the WMD storage site simply because the great majority of the PRC's WMD-related R & D sites are located in Sichuan Province and in Inner Mongolia, and are therefore well-protected and have adequate related infrastructure. But now with the expanding rail-road network inside the Tibet Autonomous Region, one can in future expect some of these storage sites being relocated to secured sites closer to Ladakh.
    As far as sources go, these issues are routinely discussed during the various seminars/symposiums that are frequently organised on the the sidelines of exhibitions like Aero India or DEFEXPO, or during seminars organised by either IDSA or the USI. There's nothing secretive about them and have been known for quite some time.

  29. Prasun why a blog name called *trishulgroup*? But at last you took my advise.

    And the biggest dissapointment is not enabling non logged-in comments (like mine, and previously yours too!). If you’re scared of critisism you shouldn’t blog. On abusive comments, either you ignore them or delete.

    I’m confident you’ll make the necessary changes.

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