Sitharaman to commission indigenous INS Kiltan on Oct 16

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will commission indigenously built INS Kiltan, an anti submarine corvette, on October 16 in Vishakhapatnam.

INS Kiltan represents a leap forward in the Indian Navy's attempts at indigenisation with as much as 90 percent of its content drawn from India itself.

The keel of INS Kiltan was laid in August 2010 and it was launched in Kolkata on March 26, 2013 by Chitra Joshi, wife of Admiral D. K. Joshi, then Chief of Naval Staff.

INS Kiltan is third of the four Project 28 warships. Project 28 was approved in 2003, and construction of the lead ship, INS Kamorta was started in August 2005. Two of the four corvettes, INS Kamorta and INS Kadmatt were commissioned in 2014 and 2016 respectively. The remaining one INS Kavaratti is under construction and is slated to be completed by the end of 2017.

INS Kiltan and INS Kavaratti are to be more advanced than their elder ships. INS Kiltan is capable of fighting under nuclear, biological and chemical environments. It will be a frontline warship of the Indian Navy with advanced stealth features and a low radar signature that enhances its anti-submarine warfare capability. The original INS Kiltan - an anti-submarine corvette - was decommissioned in 1987.

The Kamorta-class corvettes or Project 28 are a class of anti-submarine warfare corvettes currently in service with the Indian Navy. Built at Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata, they are the first anti-submarine warfare stealth corvettes to be built in India.

The platform and major internal systems of this class of corvettes are indigenously designed and built. The corvettes are named after the islands in the Lakshadweep archipelago.

The Kamorta class corvettes are intended to succeed the Kora-class corvette by precedence and Abhay-class corvette by role.

The corvette's design was originally planned to be based on the Russian corvette Project 2038.2, however, the basic design was later provided by the Indian Navy's Directorate of Naval Design, followed by the detailed design by GRSE.

The design includes many stealth ship features, including reductions in acoustic signature and vibration of the vessels.