INS Dhruv To Be commissioned soon for Tracking Satellites And Strategic Missiles Launches
India has successfully stood up to China’s rapidly-expanding People’s Liberation Army Navy plans to usurp more Indian territory. After capturing Tibet by 1960 and parts of Indian territory in Ladhak in 1962, now China was planning to capture even the Galwan Valley and areas upto Northern banks of Pangong Tso. This dream if China was shattered by the grades of the Indian Army.
Now the Indian Navy is all set to not only to defend its interest in the Indian Ocean Region but also take the battle deep into the Indo Pacific. The Navy is set to commission INS DHRUV to track satellites, strategic missiles and map the Indian Ocean bed later this year.
The 15,000-ton ship, part of a classified project, will not only create maritime domain awareness for India in the Indian Ocean but also act as an early warning system for adversary missiles headed towards both civil and Military targets in India and the Indian Ocean Region. “Final checks are going on the vessel at Vizag before the commissioning, which is expected in the first half of 2021 but neither the date nor the month is decided,” said a senior official familiar with the strategic project.
INS DHRUV has been developed with the help of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Navy with India’s Strategic Force Command and National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) as main intelligence consumers. The indigenously-developed surveillance ship has been built by Hindustan Shipyard Ltd at its Visakhapatnam facility under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan initiative.
INS DHRUV is equipped with the active electronically scanned array radars, or AESA, considered a game-changer in radar technology, and can scan various spectrums to monitor satellites of adversaries that are watching over India. It can also, as one official in South Block put it, understand the range and true missile capability of adversary nations that it finds in the Indo-Pacific.
Once the vessel is commissioned, India will be the only country outside the P-5 – the US, the UK, China, Russia and France – to have this capability
INS DHRUV will act as a major force multiplier to India’s ocean surveillance capabilities. The Indian Navy already monitors the region from the Gulf of Aden to all the ingress routes from the South China Sea with long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, surveillance aircraft and Boeing P8I anti-submarine warfare.
It will be able to provide the Indian Navy with an “ECG of the Indian Ocean”, a defence ministry official said, a reference to the electrocardiogram that is used to diagnose problems in the heart. INS DHRUV will help Indian Navy plan better offensive operations in all three dimensions — sub-surface, surface and aerial.
Strengthening the Indian Navy’s capabilities is key to countering China’s influence in the Indian Ocean given how Beijing’s sea doctrine has taken priority over its land forces. The Indian Ocean will be the front-line of the future as PLAN’s nuclear submarines try to avoid detection before crossing the Sunda Strait. Though it forgets that its jugular vein passes through the Indian Ocean Region. The Indian Navy will cut thus jugular vein if China crosses the line.
