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| India-Pakistan | |
| India's "baby boomer" | |
| 2008-01-19 | |
| Located up the winding shipping channel in Visakhapatnam harbour is a secret, completely enclosed facility known only as the Shipbuilding Centre (SBC). Inside this dry dock, nearly 50m below ground level, is a cylindrical black shape, which is as tall as a two-storey building and at 104 m in length, is longer than the Qutub Minar lying on its side. Technicians working on it confess to a surge of national pride: IndiaÂ’s first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine or SSBN is arguably its greatest engineering project.
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| Posted by:john frum |
| #4 Given the Indian experience assembling and operating their German HDW 209s, operating the previous Soviet Charlie class boat and with their purchase of French Scorpene sub technology, it would be interesting to see how this compares with the larger Chinese SSBNs. |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-01-19 14:30 |
| #3 I wasn't that impressed until they pointed out it is longer than the Qutub Minar lying on its side. That sh*t is long. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2008-01-19 13:17 |
| #2 An Indian junior minister lost his job for mentioning this. Quite absurd given all the info in the public domain for more than a decade. The defence minister is on record in the parliament, replying to a question.. "India has no missile project named sagarika". Yet the DRDO released a picture of the missile launcher (it seems three of these will fit into each tube of the SSBN), in front of a building marked "sagarika annex". |
| Posted by: Harry Hupereper4949 2008-01-19 13:04 |
| #1 A good thing it's a secret. If I knew, I might mention it over dinner some night, clearly a bad thing. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-19 12:37 |