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The Indian Navy's indigenous warship building programme entered the stealth era with the launch of the first of the three Project 17 (P17) stealth frigates on 18 April 2003 at the Mazagaon Docks Limited (MDL) yards in Mumbai. The ship was christened INS "Shivalik" (after a Himalayan mountain range) by Mrs. Kamaudi Kumari, wife of the Indian Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) Admiral Madhvendra Singh. The launching ceremony symbolised the culmination of nearly a decade-long effort from the conceptual stage on to design, modification, sanction and construction of these frigates for the Indian Navy and its Directorate of Naval Design (DND). These state-of-the-art warships will be the Indian Navy's new standard multi-role principal surface combatant for the 21st Century. They are unlike any other warship built in India. Featuring radically new (for Indian yards) modular construction methods and a comprehensive weapon and sensor suite, these frigates will be much more capable warships than the "Delhi " (Project 15) class destroyers, also built by MDL, in terms of weapon and sensor suites, machinery control systems and signature management.
PROJECT HISTORY
The P17 was conceptualised and designed by the Indian Navy's Directorate of Naval Design (DND), working in conjunction with the Directorate of Marine Engineering (DME) and Directorate of Electrical Engineering (DEE), under the direction of Rear Admiral (ret'd) N.P. Gupta, who carries on temporarily as Director General Naval Design (DGND) after retirement and reports to the Controller of Warship Production & Acquisition, Vice Admiral P. Jaitley. Other key players in this project include naval architects Captain Vaidyanathan (former project director) and Commodore Badhwar (incumbent project director) as well as marine engineers Commander Anup P. Keny and Commander Sanjay Singh. The DND's responsibility is primarily with naval architecture while the choices of integrators, machinery, systems, weapons and sensor suites are made by the DME and DEE, both being part of Materials Branch at Naval Headquarters, currently headed by Vice Admiral Bhasin, the Chief of Material.
Cabinet approval for this project was given in 1997. This was followed by a Letter of Intent to the ship's builders, Mazagaon Docks Ltd. in February 1998. The Navy formally ordered the first 3 vessels in early 1999. However, production started about two years later due to delays resulting from specification...