Indian Navy Prioritizes "Made in India" Radar-Evading Tech for Exposed Weapons and Sensor Systems to Enhance Warships Stealth

In a bid to bolster its naval prowess, the Indian Navy is intensifying efforts to enhance the stealth capabilities of its warships. The focus is on minimizing the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of exposed weapons and sensor systems, making vessels less detectable by enemy radar.

This initiative is a key component of the Navy's broader strategy to integrate advanced stealth features into its warships, particularly those being developed under the "Made in India" campaign.

The Navy is urging its design teams to collaborate closely with weapon and sensor suppliers to achieve this goal. By reducing the radar signature of its ships, the Navy aims to significantly improve their survivability and combat effectiveness in modern naval warfare.

A major thrust of this effort is the development of specialized stealth shields for the main and secondary guns of warships. These shields, being developed in partnership with Indian public sector undertakings (PSUs), utilize advanced materials and designs to minimize radar reflection while maintaining the operational efficiency of the weapon systems.

Main and secondary guns, by their nature, present significant radar signatures due to their size and exposed positions. The stealth shields are designed to mask these components, making the ships harder to detect, especially during critical operations.

Furthermore, the Navy is championing the development of indigenous weapon systems with inherently reduced RCS. This emphasis on "Made in India" solutions with built-in stealth capabilities is influencing the design and manufacturing of critical systems like Vertical Launch Systems (VLS).

The Vertical Launch – Short Range Surface to Air Missile (VL-SRSAM) system, a crucial element of the Navy's air defence strategy, exemplifies this approach. The VL-SRSAM has undergone several design revisions to minimize its radar signature, ensuring that it has minimal impact on the ship's overall stealth profile.

This drive towards stealth technology reflects the evolving nature of modern naval warfare, where reduced detectability is paramount. A lower RCS enables warships to operate more covertly, enhancing their ability to conduct operations without being easily detected by adversaries.

This is particularly crucial in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), where the Indian Navy needs to maintain a tactical edge while patrolling vast maritime territories.

 

[Rajesh]

Most of these ships will have rbu 6000 and unless they redesign these Soviet design completely the rcs reduction is a challenge.

 

[Dipesh Debnath]

How difficult is it to build stealth surface? Even smugglers are building stealth crafts since 2010. Steps: Make the surface plain, vend it at angle found in Google and stop vibrating and making noise by rubber based dampers. Make a bigger outer volume and hide all behind the smooth metal wall. Coat with some ceramic based paint and reduce the heat by mixing with cold air and water. Or better is to hire the commenters here as a technical consultants.

 

[Kira]

Not only weapons platforms themselves, but the entire ships are not as sleek modern counterparts from other navies.

 

[ASHOK CARROL]

Costs will increase exponentially. The Grse built corvettes with no anti missile or SSM capabilities cost the navy over 3000 crores per corvette, when the cost should not have been over 300 crores.

 

[Sandeep]

How difficult is it to build stealth surface? Even smugglers are building stealth crafts since 2010. Steps: Make the surface plain, vend it at angle found in Google and stop vibrating and making noise by rubber based dampers. Make a bigger outer volume and hide all behind the smooth metal wall. Coat with some ceramic based paint and reduce the heat by mixing with cold air and water. Or better is to hire the commenters here as a technical consultants.

It’s not as simple as you make it out to be. These are very complex to carry out because of its large size, radars, missiles, helicopter deck etc.

 

[Anant]

Costs will increase exponentially. The Grse built corvettes with no anti missile or SSM capabilities cost the navy over 3000 crores per corvette, when the cost should not have been over 300 crores.

Sir, I'd say that if we do build a larger number of ships with reduced RCS technology, a lot of that fixed cost would be distributed.

Of course, the Kamorta-class are both ridiculously expensive and ridiculously underarmed.

 

[Sandeep]

India needs to improve its stealth ships even more. We should also develop an anti corrosive radar absorbing paint which will help a lot. We can always enclose our gun in a stealth box which can be opened when we want to use it. We can cover our hull with more angled composites or other materials. We are also going to cover our antennas in a stealth enclosure. So there’s a lot of tiny and large things that we can do.

 

[Oleg Olkha]

The shape of the superstructure and the arrangement of its antennas significantly reduce the ship's radar cross section, making the ship less visible to enemy radar at sea, especially when combined with EW, underwater exhaust system, (SA`AR-6) etc... These are great examples:

But there are also other good ships. Regards...