'Arnala' is the first of the eight anti-submarine warfare shallow water craft ((ASW-SWC)) being built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers, Kolkata. ‘ARNALA’ the first of eight Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) Shallow Water Craft (SWC) which was launched on Tuesday in Chennai, is named after the island fort of the same name off the coast of Maharashtra.
Built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) for the Indian Navy, the ship has been named Arnala to signify the strategic maritime importance accorded to the island of Arnala, located about 13 kilometres north of Vasai, by Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The launch was held at the shipbuilding facility of L&T at Kattupalli in Chennai. Arnala made her first contact with water at 10.40 am on Tuesday at the launch ceremony presided over by Rasika Chaube, Financial Adviser (Defence Services), Ministry of Defence.
In any ship’s life, there are four key ceremonial occasions – keel laying, launching, commissioning and decommissioning. Launching is when the ship is transferred from the building site into the waters.
In keeping with Naval maritime tradition, Chaube launched the ship to the chanting of invocation from Atharva Veda.
Contract for building eight ASW SWC ships was signed between the Ministry of Defence and GRSE, Kolkata, in April 2019. The Arnala class of ships will replace the Abhay class ASW ships of the Indian Navy and are designed to undertake anti-submarine operations in coastal waters and low intensity maritime operations (LIMO) including subsurface surveillance in littoral waters. The 77.6-metre-long ASW SWC ships have a displacement of 900 tons with a maximum speed of 25 knots and endurance of 1,800 NM. The Ministry of Defence has said that ASW SWC ships will have over 80 per cent indigenous content, ensuring that large-scale defence production is executed by Indian manufacturing units thereby generating employment and capability build-up within the country.