Standard Indian approach….
tiny order= huge costs and production delays,
huge red tap gap to gain fresh approvals
follow on tiny order
meanwhile PLA(N) will be flodding IOR with their fleet
the South Koreans will have a stronger navy than the IN within 15 years
I think its still too early to tell, the Project 75A or 77 is a classified program with very little to no public information.
You have to also take into consideration the long construction timelines associated with projects as complex as building SSN and SSBN.
Currently, only SBC has the capacity and the capability to build nuclear submarines in India.
At present, its capacity is of building 2 nuclear submarines simultaneously.
It is being upgraded to build 4 nuclear submarines simultaneously but it will still be a year or two until the additional production lines have been built and are operational.
You have to also consider that the timelines of construction of the P75A SSN and S5 class SSBN do coincide, there might be a difference of a year at max.
The likely scenario is that SBC will be building 2 S5 class SSBN and 2 P75A SSN simultaneously with each sub taking 6-8 years to be built at minimum.
Even if 6 SSNs are ordered upfront, the SBC facility won't be able to utilize all 4 production lines for their construction as 3 S5 class SSBN are going to be built with 3 additional S5 class SSBN to be built at a later stage for a total of 6 S5 class SSBN.
Approvals for such strategic projects will be far quicker, we have already seen that in the case of Arihant class wherein due to revised timelines of the S5 class SSBN construction an additional submarine of the Arihant class was ordered so that the production line did not go idle.