The Indian Navy unveiled Mormugao, its new destroyer at Mumbai’s Mazgaon Docks for the very first time on Saturday, the 17th September. The ship is the second in Project 15-B destroyers which will be fitted and inducted into the Navy in a couple of years.
Here’s all about the muck talked-about Mormugao:
- The Project 15B destroyers are packed with advanced stealth features, sensors and top of the line weapons making it one of the most technological advanced guided missile destroyers in the world. The navy aims to take the level of indigenisation to 68% in this project.
- Mormugao weighs a whopping 7,300 tonnes and is 163 metres long. It is named after the picturesque Mormugao port of Goa and is being built by government-run Mazgaon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDL).
- It is powered by 4 Ukranian gas turbines that can run at a max speed of 30 knots (56 km per hour) making Mormugao one of the most lethal destroyers to have been built in India.
- The ship has been built to operate 4,000 nautical miles at sea with a capacity of 50 officers and 250 sailors operating it.
- The Mormugao has a Multi-Function Surveillance Threat Alert Radar (MF-STAR). It is an Israeli-designed sensor that can track targets in the air from hundreds of kilometres away.
- It can direct a number of Barak 8 Long-Range Surface to Air missiles (LR-SAM) to intercept the targets from more than 70 km away.
- It also features the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile that can hit the target at land and sea from f*cking 300 kilometres away!
- The warship is further equipped wit, surface-to-air missiles, surface- to-surface missiles and anti-submarine rocket launchers. It is also capable of carrying two anti-submarine warfare helicopters.
- The milestone here is that the hull of the warship will be floated on water for the first time. The vessel will undergo certain testing required by Indian Navy and would be subsequently known as INS Mormugao.
- The Project 15-B destroyers claim to be less detectable by the enemy radar. It’ll also be silent which makes it difficult for the enemy submarines and warships to spot it. Four are being built at a cost of ₹29,700 crore.
