Sneek Peek into India’s Indigenous Torpedo Program
It was exactly 130 years ago when the first submarine fired a Torpedo while it was submerged till date torpedo is still one of the most powerful weapons in naval warfare, and will remain an indispensable instrument for upholding maritime security in future. For many decades to come it is unlikely to change . Yesterday out of 196 countries on Planet Earth , India joined elite few (8) Countries who have their own Ingenuously developed Heavyweight Torpedo programme when it handed over Ship-based indigenously built Varunastra Heavyweight anti-submarine torpedo to Indian Navy for which Navy will place orders for 75 of this HWTs for deployment in all its front-line warships . Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL) in Visakhapatnam which is part of the DRDO consortium of laboratories and also is the only establishment in India which has been tasked to develop underwater weapons systems for Indian Navy . let’s have a peek look into India’s underfunded Torpedo programme .
TAL (Light Weight Torpedo) aka Shyena : TAL is 2.75 metres long, weighs 220 kg and packs 50 kg of explosives which was inducted into Indian Navy on March 3, 2012, which was also India’s first production grade Torpedo which entered production at Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad. TAL is an electrically propelled, self- homing Torpedo with 95 per cent indigenous components which can be launched both from ships and helicopters. It can hunt submarines with a speed of 33 knots with endurance of six minutes in shallow and deep waters and can operate at a maximum depth of 540 metres Navy at that time had placed orders for 25 TALs.
Advanced LWT (ALWT) : ALWT is successor programme of TAL which has some minor corrections and major improvements over TAL after taking active feedbacks from Indian Navy . ALWT is still under development and little progress has been reported about it publically but ALWT was supposed to ready for trials by 2016.
Takshak : Takshak is heavyweight torpedoes (HWTs) to be launched from a submarine against other submarines or warships . Takshak HWTs is a submarine-launched variant of Varunastra HWTs with wire guidance . Takshak uses wire as a medium of communication between the torpedo and the firing submarine . If the wire breaks before it hits its target then Takshak becomes an autonomous torpedo like its Varunastra ship-launched variant which can travel up to a distance of 40 km for taking out submarines and can operate up to a depth of 400 m. Takshak HWT programme is key and significant torpedo programme which will be the main armament of many indigenously to be developed Nuclear Ballistic missile submarines and Nuclear attack submarines in future .
Shakti HWTS : India plans to develop advanced Thermal Propulsion Engine for Heavy Weight Torpedoes. Under development is a torpedo called Shakti with thermal propulsion, which can generate 500 kilowatts of power and rev up the engine within a second to propel a Torpedo to travel to its target at much higher speeds than what is provided by conventional propulsion .
Source:
http://idrw.org/peek-look-indias-indigenous-torpedo-program/ .
