As INS Arihant completes its first deterrence patrol, Indian defence scientists need to be applauded

The U.S. Navy officially embraced the concept of nuclear submarines when it rolled out the USS Nautilus in 1954. India arrived fifty-years late to the nuclear submarine party when it first launched INS Arihant, a 6,000-tonne “technology demonstrator” in 2009 and commissioned it seven years later. Even though Arihant did not suffer the same fate as the USS Thresher or the ill-fated Soviet nuclear submarines, it suffered an unfortunate event following its commissioning when an open hatch let seawater into the propulsion area, forcing the Indian Navy to park the submarine for ten months to replace all the affected propulsion pipes. Five years from now, these three fresh nuclear submarines, along with Arihant, could prowl deep into the far corners of the Indian Ocean, tailing enemy submarines, practising deep dives, and posing existential challenges to India’s enemies. If you read some doomsday articles about India’s ATV project, you would see that the journalists do appreciate the complexities that designers encounter while designing nuclear submarines and that it takes years to perfect the use of such machines, yet they would choose headlines that would instantly deflate the hopes of any patriot who would want to hear about the country taking positive steps to bolster its strategic defence posture.