Following the news that the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has declared the Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) as the lowest bidder for next generation missile vessels (NGMVs);

Chandan Nayak, Analyst of Aerospace, Defense and Security at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“GlobalData expects the contract to strengthen the domestic aerospace and defense industry in India besides helping it to achieve its vision of inducting new NGMVs under the ‘Make in India’ initiative. This initiative will also encourage the defense companies to work collaboratively on the designing of the NGMVs. The aim is to streamline the defense forces and provide them advanced vessels to tackle all the foreseeable scenarios such as terrorism, combating smuggling and humanitarian relief.

“The current fleet of four Khukri class corvettes were inducted way back in the 1980s, which are expected to be replaced with new NGMVs. Additionally, the Cochin Shipyard was selected by the Indian MoD as lowest bidder for the construction of six NGMVs worth US$1.503bn (INR100bn).

“India will try to maintain its military supremacy in the Indian Ocean Region and therefore, there is every possibility that the Indian Navy will continue to commission new naval ships and invest in technology to augment its older vessels.”