Defense Expo 2018: First desi Coast Guard ship with copter takes to sea from Kattupalli Port

CHENNAI: Away from the glitz of the defence exhibition which boasts of the best of technologies, a private shipyard in Kattupalli Port achieved a remarkable feat and commissioned an indigenously made offshore patrol vessel into the Indian Coast Guard on Wednesday.
The ICGS Vikram, designed and built by Larsen and Toubro, is the ‘first of class’ of seven new generation offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) the company will be making for defence ministry based on a contract in March 2015, under government’s Make in India initiative.

The company has made several small-sized patrol vessels for the Coast Guard. But this is the first medium-sized ship that can carry a helicopter and has been commissioned in a record period of 25 months, including build time, harbour trials and sea trials. The ICGS Vikram class OPVs are long-range surface ships, capable of conduct coastal and offshore patrolling, policing maritime zones,surveillance, anti-smuggling and anti-piracy operations with limited wartime roles.

Despite being nearly 97m long, 15m wide, has 3.6m draught, 2,140 tonne displacement and a range of 5,000 nautical miles, the heavy vessel fitted with front propulsion pods has high manoeuvrability. The OPVs are built with integrated platform management system to enable special control capabilities generally integrated in larger warships like Frigates and Destroyers.

S N Subrahmanyan, CEO and MD, L&T Toubro, said: “It is a momentous occasion to become the first private Indian shipyard to deliver an in-house designed offshore patrol vessel to the ministry of defence. This bears testimony to our capabilities and commitment towards Make in India. Given the opportunity and a level playing field, L&T can provide the much-needed impetus to the augmentation of Naval and Coast Guard fleets through in-house design and timely delivery of vessels.”

The engineering major has built state-of-the-art facilities and gathered a talent pool for defence manufacturing which it aims to strengthen in the coming years. “L&T’s defence shipbuilding capabilities have come of age with over two decades of experience in design, engineering and construction of complex defence platforms and three decades of track record in platform-specific equipment and systems. L&T is uniquely placed to address complete value chain of defence shipbuilding from design to manufacturing of critical ship equipment, modular construction and through life support,” said Jayant Patil, director (defence) and member of L&T Board.