The Navy is building two Anti- Submarine Warfare Corvettes using carbon fibre composite material from Sweden for the first time as it goes beyond using steel for warships.
Warships are traditionally made using stainless steel but the new carbon fibre composite superstructure, imported from Swedish shipyard Kockums, not only makes the warship lighter but also makes it difficult for the enemy to spot.
Being built by defence PSU Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd (GRSE) in Kolkata, INS Kiltan and INS Kavaratti are named after islands in the Lakshwadeep archipelago.
The Kamorta-class corvettes would be delivered to the Navy within 2017.
"These are the first ships where such a technology is being used in India. Stealth is the most important feature of composite material as it is less susceptible to detection unlike steel," Commodore Ratnakar Ghosh, Director (shipbuilding), GRSE, told PTI.
The ship's superstructure is made of composite material while the remaining part including hull uses steel.
The new technology with extremely low radar cross-section has been pioneered by Swedish Navy which uses Visby-class corvettes, made entirely of composites.
Other nations have used fiberglass reinforced plastic (FBR) for similar stealth features.
Divided into smaller blocks, parts of the composite superstructure came from the Swedish shipyard and were assembled and integrated with the main hull under supervision of Swedish experts in Kolkata.
