India is said to have stealthily launched its third Arihant-class nuclear-powered missile submarine at the secretive Ship Building Centre (SCB) in Visakhapatnam, according to reports by UK-based Janes Defence Weekly that cited citing satellite imagery sources.
The magazine declared in its December 29 report that the submersible ballistic nuclear submarine (SSBN), known simply as S4, was launched on November 23 and had been ‘relocated’ to near the ‘fitting-out wharf’ that was presently occupied by INS Arighat, the second such nuclear-armed missile submarine.
Arighat was launched in November 2014, and its commissioning has reportedly been delayed possibly due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the Indian press had not reported the S4 SSBN’s launch.
Satellite imagery confirms that at 7,000-tonnes, the S4 SSBN was ‘slightly larger’, with a load water line measurement of 125.4m compared with 111.6m of the 6,000-tonne INS Arihant, the lead boat in this class. It categorised the S4 – and successive boats – as ‘Arihant-stretch’ variants.
Developed jointly by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), select Indian Navy (IN) personnel and Russian scientists and technicians, the S4 boat and the follow-on, under-fabrication S4 like the previous two SSBNs, comprise a critical part of India’s three-tier credible nuclear deterrent.
India plans on eventually fielding at least four such SSBNs, with an option to build two more, to add maritime strike capability to its existing land and aerial-based capacity in delivering strategic weapons.
