New Delhi: The Indian Navy on Monday commissioned INS Nipun at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai, giving the force a dedicated platform for deep-sea diving and submarine rescue operations on the western seaboard. The vessel can support saturation diving up to 300 metres and is designed to carry, launch and operate the Navy’s deep submergence rescue vehicle.
Nipun is the second ship of the Nistar class. Its induction, following the deployment of INS Nistar at Visakhapatnam in July last year, provides the Navy with dedicated submarine rescue support on both coasts.
Filling A Long-Standing Gap
The commissioning brings to an end a nearly eight-year-old operational shortfall. India had procured two deep submergence rescue vehicle systems from UK-based JFD and inducted them at Mumbai and Visakhapatnam in 2018 and 2019. The acquisition gave India an integral submarine rescue capability possessed by only a select group of navies. However, the Navy lacked specially built ships to transport and deploy the systems.
The first DSRV was operated from INS Sabarmati, a ship obtained from the Shipping Corporation of India. “Response time is the whole game in a submarine accident and the mothership is what determines it. A rescue system that has to be loaded onto a borrowed hull before sailing loses hours that trapped crews do not have,” an official explained.
Speaking at the commissioning ceremony, Navy chief Admiral Krishna Swaminathan said Nipun’s ability to carry and deploy the DSRV “expands our capacity to assist a distressed submarine”. He said the rescue facility could be extended to partner navies in addition to being used for India’s own submarines.
DSRV’s Rescue Capability
The DSRV is operated by a three-member crew and can bring 14 people to safety from a submarine lying on the seabed during one sortie. It can dock with the escape hatch of a submarine at a depth of up to 650 metres. During trials, the vehicle descended to 666 metres.
The platform is also likely to strengthen India’s role in regional maritime cooperation. In April 2021, India deployed its DSRV towards Bali after the International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office issued an alert over Indonesia’s KRI Nanggala. The submarine was later lost with 53 personnel on board. In the region, only a few submarine-operating navies have the resources to conduct such a rescue independently.
Strategic Maritime Environment
Admiral Swaminathan described the induction against the backdrop of a shifting strategic landscape. He said the country was undergoing “significant strategic churn” and that the maritime domain was becoming more contested.
The underwater environment in the Indian Ocean has grown busier than at any point since the Cold War, with Chinese submarines making regular forays into the region and neighbouring states adding to their underwater fleets.
The Navy chief cautioned that bringing Nipun into service was merely the first stage. Its real value, he said, would depend on “how rapidly and effectively we convert this new platform into deployable operational capability”.
The Navy is on track to commission 18 warships this year.
