Indian Navy to commission state of the art satellite and ballistic missile tracking ship INS Dhruv

The Commune

3 years ago

The Indian Navy will commission India’s first satellite and ballistic missile tracking ship, INS Dhruv, code designation VC-11184 on 10 September becoming a select group of nations to have such capabilities including France, the US, the UK, Russia, and China that operate such ships.

INS Dhruv will not only track the satellite and ballistic missiles but also has the capability to detect enemy submarines and map ocean beds for research. It will serve as a “force multiplier” for the Indian Navy by enhancing and assisting in planning “subsurface [submarine], surface, and aerial offensive operations.

INS Dhruv has been built by the Hindustan Shipyard in collaboration with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), and is likely to be commissioned by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval from Visakhapatnam.

The ship is 15,000 t (15,000 long tons; 17,000 short tons) and will reportedly be manned by Indian Navy personnel and the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) and this is the largest warship after INS Vikrant that has been built in India under Make in India initiative.

After some delays, the ship was delivered in 2018 and completed sea trials in 2019. The ship, 175 meters long and has a crew complement of 300, and reportedly cost 1.5 million rupees crore ($206 million) in total.

Nothing much was known about this ship as it was part of a highly classified project and with the commissioning of INS Dhruv, India has an early warning system for enemy missiles headed towards Indian cities and military establishments and will spearhead India’s future anti-ballistic missile capability.

The sensors onboard this vessel are so powerful that the ship mounts three auxiliary power generators to generate electricity by its two combined diesel engines, bringing total power output to 14 MW.

INS Dhruv has command, control, and communications (C3) systems, and electronic support measure antennas (ESMs) capable of spying on electromagnetic emissions generated by other country’s ships and aircraft—a capability known as electronic intelligence, or ELINT that would be used to monitor the movements of ships and aircraft in the water surrounding the Indian subcontinent as China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy increases its presence in the Indian Ocean.

Both China and Pakistan have nuclear ballistic missile capability and INS Dhruv will give India the advantage and it will become an important part of 360-degree maritime domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific at the time when the era of underwater armed and surveillance drones has dawned.

The ship is equipped with DRDO developed state of the art active scanned array (AESA) which will give India the capability to understand the true missile capability of the adversary when they test their ballistic missiles and help the Indian Navy in planning better military operations in all three dimensions- sub-surface, surface, and aerial.

There are also reports that a second, smaller (118 meters long) surveillance vessel with specialised in tracking cruise missiles is under construction at the Cochin shipyard.

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