Building ships made easy

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: Building modern warships is no easy task. Before the hull is launched into the water, hundreds of technicians take over, working tirelessly for months in installing heavy equipment like engines, electronics, miles of electronic cables and the armoury that adds stealth to the battleship. Involving tonnes of metal, the mammoth exercise is often marred by fatalities arising out of dangerous mishaps.

The Indian Navy is looking at introducing an entirely new concept in order to expedite the entire process. Called modular shipbuilding, the concept is being promoted by UK-based BAE Systems. A high level delegation from the UK-based firm will be visiting India soon to offer such a technology for shipbuilding.

Benefits that the Indian Navy can derive from this concept are two-fold. Firstly, rolling our new ships will become a fast affair. Secondly, safety aspects for the technicians in building new ships will not be compromised.

Typically, modular shipbuilding involves building the ship in huge blocks—typically 300-tonne blocks—in the friendly conditions of a ‘modular workshop,’ inform BAE officials. Once the blocks are ready, they are ferried by a crane to a dry dock where they are assembled into a warship. Indian Navy officials inform that this modular method might be considered to build the next-generation warships.

Till date, the technology associated with modular shipbuilding is still not available in India, though senior naval officers say that a few parts for submarines are manufactured somewhere else and then fitted at the dock. “You can safely assume that this modular shipbuilding is in nascent stage in India,” inform officials.

BAE officials say, “Our shipbuilding facilities are responsible for some of the best and most advanced ships in the world. We are currently building six destroyers for the UK Royal Navy, three ocean patrol vessels for the Royal Navy of Oman and three offshore patrol vessels for the government of Trinidad and Tobago.”

Officials from BVT Surface Fleet, the maritime joint venture between BAE Systems and VT Group, say that the use of prefabricated modular cabins reduce onboard outfitting time and consequently shorten the shipbuilding cycle. In addition, modular construction improves shipbuilding efficiency because it transfers field assembly work to a shop environment.