By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
India reportedly will commission its second nuclear-powered ballistic submarine by the end of 2024.
And that should please the Pentagon, which sees the Indian sub fleet as critical to its Indo-Pacific strategy at a time when China is building longer-range JL-3 submarine-launched nuclear missiles capable of traveling 4,000 miles.
According to Janes,, the sub will go into service as the INS Arighat, roughly seven years after it was launched at the Indian Navy’s Ship Building Center in Visakhapatnam. India has launched three of the nuclear-powered subs.
The first one, INS Arihant, was launched in 2009 and was commissioned in 2016. In 2018, a crewmember left a hatch open and flooded the propulsion system, the accident that derailed the vessel’s operations for ten months. In 2022, India said that Arihant had successfully tested a ballistic missile.
Another unnamed submarine was launched in 2021 and isn’t expected to be commissioned for several years.
Arighat was built with Russian steel, and is powered by a pressurized light water reactor developed with Russian assistance. Janes says the vessel is equipped with 12 K-15 Sagarika ballistic missiles, a two-stage, solid-propellant weapon with a range of more than 430 miles.
Ultimately, India is expected to build four nuclear-powered submarines. Three of them will eventually fire the K-4 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which have a range of more than 2,100 miles. If fired from the Indian Ocean, those missiles could hit targets in China.
That could prove critical to deterring China in the Indo-Pacific. The US is counting on that a time when the Navy has yet to deploy its Columbia-class submarines. The new vessels will replace the Ohio-class ballistic subs, which have served well beyond their anticipated service life. But the first one isn’t expected to go into service until 2031.
