Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV)
The plan for the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) until the late 1980s, was to build an SSN—a fast-moving deep-diving nuclear-powered attack submarine, which would hunt surface ships. Around the time India leased a Charlie-I class nuclear-powered attack submarine from the Soviet Union, planning veered towards building a submarine carrying ballistic missiles. The hull design was lengthened and the SSN quietly transformed into an SSBN able to fit as many as 12 SLBMs.
The Indian Navy is pitching for a submarine-launched nuclear missile to boost the nation's deterrence capabilities. "With nuclear proliferation posing a greater threat along with Weapons of Mass Destruction, our unilateral policy of no-first-use necessitates that India possesses a credible and survivable nuclear deterrent, including submarine-launched," Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said pn 08 October 2008. India had in February 2008 tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile for the first time that would take another three years to be fully operational.
The nuclear haves increasingly relying on sea-based nuclear deterrence in preference to land and air segments. India has a number of foreign-produced cruise missile systems in its arsenal, to include Exocet, Styx, Starbright, Sea Eagle, and perhaps the Russian Sunburn supersonic missile. It also has some indigenous cruise missile systems under development to include the Sagarika and Lakshya variant.
The Sagarika (Oceanic) began development in 1994 as a submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM) which will have a range of at least 300 kms (a few claim 1000 kms); it was projected for deployment around 2005. The program has met with considerable delays and the missile is not expected to become operational before 2010. It will probably arm India's nuclear submarine, the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV).
According to some accounts India planned to have as many as five nuclear submarines capable of carrying missiles with nuclear warheads. Once the vessel is completed, it may be equipped with Danush/Sagarika cruise missiles and an advanced sonar system. However, according to some analysts the most probable missile for the Indian submarine would be the Yahont anti-ship cruise missile designed by NPO Mashinostroyeniya.
Media reports speak of a plan to build by 2015 a fleet of three nuclear submarines, each carrying 12 nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. One report claims that the ATV will carry either 14 SAGARIKA with a range of 750 km or 4-5 AGNI-3 with a range of 3500 km, along with a few torpedoes.
The SSBN fleet will be housed on the east coast at a new naval base in Rambilli, a few kilometers south of Visakhapatnam, where nearly 3,000 acre of land has been acquired for India’s first strategic base, to be manned entirely by military personnel. Unlike the narrow single channel in Visakhapatnam, it will offer the nuclear fleet direct access into the sea. The first phase of the project, costing approximately Rs 1,500 crore, was to be ready by 2011.
But Prasun K Sengupta concluded that the ATV was purely a technology demonstration project which will never become an operational vessel and never be commissioned into service. Even externally, it won't in any way resemble an operational submarine, contrary to speculation in mainstream Indian newsmedia. By this view, a full-scale operational India-built SSBN is at least a decade away. Everything depends on the first unit successfully undergoing sea trials. This alone will take another five years and only if the trials are successful will the production-series SSBN be built.
