Russian designers ready to help India upgrade shipyards - Rubin design bureau

CHENNAI, April 12. /TASS/. Russian shipbuilders and designers will be prepared to furnish assistance to India in creating the necessary infrastructures for building ships at local shipyards under the Make in India initiative, the CEO of the design bureau Rubin, Igor Vilnit, told TASS on the sidelines of the exhibition DefExpo-2018. The main thrust of the initiative Make in India is to draw big businesses to the development of the national defense-industrial complex and arrange for the production of technologies at joint enterprises in cooperation with foreign partners. "The implementation of the program for building new non-nuclear submarines requires systemic approach. Our Indian counterparts are creating and developing their own design bureaus, upgrading shipyards and establishing infrastructure that will serve the Indian Navy for many years. Rubin and other Russian shipbuilding enterprises will be prepared to provide assistance," he said. Over the past ten years Rubin officials repeatedly visited Indian shipyards for talks with the manufacturers of components, Vilnit said, adding that the bureau was of high opinion of India’s capability to build and maintain the submarines’ life cycle on its own. "Rubin has held repeated consultations with India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) over a project for designing and testing air independent propulsion for submarines of the future," Vilnit added. "The question of sharing technologies, including the most advanced and sensitive ones, is decided at the level of the Russian and Indian governments and, on the Russian side, by the federal service for military-technical cooperation and Rosoboronexport. For its part, Rubin, which has a 50-year-long record of cooperation with the Indian Navy, invariably seeks to meet the demand of its privileged strategic partner India," he stated. Read more