Navy to decommission 40-year-old submarines

NEW DELHI: Curtains are being drawn on the last of Navy’s Soviet-era Foxtrot submarines, were commissioned around 40 years ago.

At a ceremony in Vishakhaptnam on Friday, INS Vela, one of the last two Foxtrots left, would be de-commissioned. These were probably the oldest submarines in active service anywhere in the world. The last one - Vagli - is also on its final leg and would be removed from the naval fleet later this year.

Vela and Vagli are also known as the V-class are part of second batch of eight Foxtrots bought by India from the Soviet Union in the late 1960s. The V-class had slightly superior sensors than the first four - the K-class Kurusura, Karanj, Khanderi and Kalvari.

Vela was commissioned on August 31, 1973. Officials said a proposal to convert Vela into a submarine museum was under consideration. Kurusura is now country’s first submarine museum at Vishakhapatnam.

With the decommissioning of the last of Foxtrots, the Navy would be left with eight Russian Kilo class and four German HDW type-209 conventional submarines. Officials said Vishakhapatnam became a submarine base with the Foxtrots. It has grown into a submarine hub and is also the birth place of India’s first nuclear under water vessel INS Arihant. The Indian Navy is perhaps the only navy which operates four-decade-old submarine.

The de-commissioning ceremony will be attended by present and former officers who have worked on the boat. The flags would be lowered and preserved at the sunset. For sometime, it would perform as a support vehicle for sustaining the remaining V-class submarine.