Indian Navy MSV Part 2

Larsen & Turbo – Navantia

Navantia is a Spanish state owned shipbuilding company which has been a pioneer in designing and building military and civil ships. Navantia has experience in building technologically advanced ships like frigates, amphibious ships, patrol vessels, and submarines. Navantia is part of the consortiums involved in building the Scorpene submarines in India.

Larsen & Turbo or the L&T has been a leading service provider for the Indian armed forces. L&T has designed several key components over the years for India’s robust naval platforms. L&T has been part of several key projects powering India’s dreams of being a super power. L&T has a shipyard capable of constructing vessels of up to displacement of 20,000 tons at its heavy engineering complex at Hazira. The shipyard for long has been part of several key naval projects.

L&T and Navantia formed collaboration and the vessels would be built and integrated in the L&T complex at Hazira. Navantia and L&T have decided to field the Juan Carlos for the program.

Juan Carlos is a multipurpose assault ship. The ship can be effectively used for amphibious operations and humanitarian missions. The ship is equipped with a Ski-jump which allows STOVL operations. This unique feature of the ship has earned laurels for the designers. With the ski jump the ship can also be used as an air carrier and can project the power of the operating nations across its region.

The Juan Carlos is currently being operated under the Spanish Navy which has fielded AV-8B Harrier II attack aircraft. Juan Carlos has a vast flight deck of 663 ft. The flight is equipped with eight landing spots which can handle operations of up to eight rotary aircrafts simultaneously.

The ship can carry up to 30 helicopters or 12 Harrier jets. The ship is believed have designed to accommodate the more advanced and the new F-35 lightning which can be used under a STOVL configuration. The Ship can accommodate up to 12 F-35s.

The ship has a displacement of about 26000 tonnes and can travel at speeds up to 21 Knots under full load. The ship has operation range of about 17000kms after a single replenishment.

The ship’s well deck is huge and can accommodate up to four mechanized landing crafts that can land the troops on shores with ease.

The Spanish navy currently operates the LCM-1E as the min mechanized landing crafts off the Juan Carlos. These crafts are powered by MAN D-2842 LE 402X diesel engines which churns out around 1085 hp. The craft can reach a top speed of 25 kms/hr when loaded with troops.

Equipped with radar navigation, GPS, gyro needle/magnetic compasses these crafts can operate as far as up to 37 kms from the mother ship. The communications is taken care of by the VHF and UHF communications system. Currently these crafts serve the Spanish, Australian and Turkish forces. The ship has a sprawling 65,000 sq ft of hangar area which can accommodate up to 12 aircraft. The ship is also provided with two heavy deck lifts.

Juan Carlos can accommodate a compliment of up to 900 soldiers and can also make space for up to 50 Leopard 2E tanks main battle tank thanks to its well designed stern well deck which measures a staggering 227 by 55 ft.

The main living quarters of Juan Carlos can provide quarters for up to 400 people. The main search radar of the Juan Carlos is the Indra Lanza-N 3D search radar. The radar has azimuth of 360 degrees and has a maximum range of 470 kms and can detect incoming targets within the range of 3-10000 feet. The planar array antenna consist of precision cut horizontal linear elements vertically stacked, each with its own receiver. Ultra low side lobes are achieved by precise control of the phase and amplitude of the signal fed to each element. The array is driven by distributed solid-state transmitter modules which are phase controlled. The shapes and the positions of the narrow pencil beam are controlled in range and elevation Target height is obtained using monopulse techniques, with enhanced measurement at low elevation angles by means of special pencil beam combination techniques. Using advanced digital pulse compression techniques, the processor provides extremely accurate range and height information while automatically adapting to the prevailing environmental conditions.

For advanced surface search capabilities the ship is equipped with the ARIES–LOW PROBABILITY OF INTERCEPT (LPI) RADAR. The ARIES family is a complete Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) and High Resolution Radar (HRR) solution. The ARIES family is suitable for the detection and acquisition of low Radar Cross Section (RCS) surface targets in severe sea clutter environments. This radar maintains a 360-degree search for all targets within line-of-sight distance from the radar, determining the ranges and bearing of the detected targets.

For smoothed air operations of the flight deck the ship is also equipped with Precision approach radar developed by Indra. Precision approach radar (PAR) is a radar guidance system which can provide lateral and vertical guidance to a pilot approaching for landing. Juan Carlos comes with state of the art REGULUS electronic warfare systems. The RIGEL systems take care of the decoys systems. The ship is also armed with a defensive system.

The defensive system is taken care by 4 20mm guns and a heavier 12.77 mm machine gun takes charge of the longer range threats. The ship is powered by a diesel-electric propulsion unit. A standby gas turbine power plant is connected to a pair of azimuthal pods.

The first of the ship under this class the Juan Carlos was started in May 2005; the ship was launched on 10th March 2008 and was inducted to the Spanish forces on 30th September 2010. The total spending for the ship was estimated at around US$600 million.

Australia purchased two ships of the class which were designated as the Canberra-class LHD. Navantia was to complete the ship in Spain from keel to flight deck and then to be transferred to Australia for further development of system by BAE systems. The first o the ship under this class was named HMAS Canberra and was commissioned to the forces in November 2014. The second ship HMAS Adelaide is under construction and is expected to be delivered to the force by 2016. Turkey has opted for the Juan Carlos and is expected to be furnished under a ToT and the contract is signed for an expected $500 millions.

India has for long has had ideas of operating three main CBG’s and be backed by two small carriers that can effectively fulfil India’s need for monitoring the EEZ without opting for the main CBG’s whose operations may cost in crores. The ship also promises an longer period of endurance in the high seas and can be used for operations across the Indian Ocean Region(IOR). Navantia has been part of India’s Nava technology for quite some time and with tie ups to L&T the position of Navantia has only been compounded. But Juan Carlos currently has an Diesel-Electric propulsion system against India’s need for an all exclusive Electric propulsion system.

The maximum speed attained by Juan Carlos is only 21 Nautical miles which crosses India’s requirements by a very small margin. The podded thrusters have again been used in the design. But if Navantia and L&T comes up with an newer design Juan Carlos can surely be one of the ships Indian Navy would like to operate.

Article By Karthik Kakoor

Indian Navy LHD the Multi-Role Support Vessel

The Juan Carlos LHD showing it's LST's and Fixed and Rotary wing Aircrafts

The LHD project or the Navy's multi role support vessel is the long pending naval ship building contract, for which a tender was announced in November 2013, and, the initial contract is under the Buy and Make category, the same make in India Plan, under the contract the foreign vender builds two LHD's in its shipyard and last two will be built in India under Transfer of Technology except the engines and other crucial technology.

But the project was shelved for more than five years and till now, the MoD had received responses from foreign ship builders time and again, but several countries offered their models to India, from Juan Carlos LHD to French Mistral which was recently notified, by some interior reports Indian officials denied the offer due to podded propulsion system. Mistral offered the ships built for Russia and new customized model of Mistral.

Here two main factors have led to the denial of Mistral, Primarily Mistral was built for Russian standards under a Russia and French agreement which means nearly 40% of the ship’s hull was initially built in Russia, Russian built systems were integrated with the ship which would mean a ToT clause would not be applicable here.

ToT would require Indian ship builders to be part of the ship building process from the start and working together with the foreign shipyards. Here Indian requirements is clearly for a LHD type, which have more number of helicopters and use small landing crafts for beach landing unlike LST the ship which themselves land in beaches for assault, the LHD is having good factors.

More helicopters and units, which is more important for amphibious assault can be easily integrated with the ship. The ship is able to land based defence batteries and the ship can be effectively used for humanitarian support and war time evacuation missions.

Indian navy currently operates a sizeable fleet of these of LST's and the American transferred Jalashwa and the Viraat carrier itself which is a Good LHD, where it can carry good number of fixed and rotary wing crafts, so the need of LHD remains vacant, which would be important for beach assault.

GoI has allowed three Indian Ship builders who can build these huge ships. The Indian shipyards are required to have a contract with foreign vendors for work share agreements. L&T has collaborated with Spain's Juan Carlos, the Pipavav with French DCNS for Mistrals, and ABG with American Alion Technology's, where they are currently involved in designing and modelling most of the US Navy Ships.

The Mistral is a good Platform for LHD oriented missions, Mistral is a 20,000 Tons with capabilities of carrying good number of helicopters and small number of landing crafts and air cushioned vehicles, along with good endurance and range. Mistral can carry up to 16 Chinooks or 25 Sea Hawk helicopters clubbed along with attack helicopters, along with some 10 to 20 tanks with 500 fully armed assault troops with two to three air cushioned vehicles for support the Beach landing.

The other competitor is the Spain Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos is equipped with a Ski Jump capability, which can launch Fighters ranging from AV 8B and F 35 B, meanwhile the Mistral too can launch such VTOL crafts but Juan has an upper edge with the Ski jump capability which is easy for launching aircraft's, recently the Australian forces have taken delivery of its Juan LHD from Spain.

The LHD's won't be armed with any offensive suites, like land attack cruise missiles or air defence missile; they are usually armed with smaller number of HMG's and one or two CIWS weapons. A destroyer or frigate is needed to escort these crucial LHD’s. If Indian forces had been armed with these ships as of now, we could have evacuated 4000 of our citizens from war torn Yemen in one or two runs, while as of now the need for five frontline warships to evacuate such mass peoples from Yemen is required.