Chandigarh: The Indian Navy will no doubt be jubilant that nearly three decades after it set in motion the concept that led to Project 75(I), and some 19 years after the programme was formally launched to build six diesel-electric submarines (SSKs) with air-independent propulsion (AIP) and land-attack capability, it may finally see the first of these boats commissioned seven to eight years from now, around 2033–34.This follows Thursday’s approval by the Union finance ministry for the long-delayed Rs 70,000-crore P-75I programme involving Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited and Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems, paving the way for final project clearance by the Prime Minister-headed Cabinet Committee on Security.Thereafter, if all proceeds according to schedule – always a dangerous assumption in India’s byzantine defence procurement system – the final P-75I contract could be signed within the current financial year, ending March 2027. Following this, the first Type 214 SSK is likely to be commissioned seven years later, with the sixth and final submarine entering service by 2038–39, some three decades after the Navy commenced planning such a programme in the late 1990s.“Few military modernisation programmes capture the dysfunction of India’s materiel procurement system more vividly than P-75I,” said a two-star naval veteran who was involved in prolonged negotiations on the submarine tender during his service years. Requesting anonymity for fear of repercussions, he added that by the time the first Mazagon– Thyssenkrupp-built submarine enters service, an entire generation – perhaps even a generation and a half – of officers will already have retired awaiting its delivery.Alongside this, the regional maritime balance is likely to tilt further in favour of adversaries that are rapidly modernising their undersea forces, while the Indian Navy’s present-generation SSK capability risks obsolescence amid accelerating advances in submarine warfare technologies. China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, for instance, is expected to induct dozens more conventional and nuclear-powered submarines by the mid-2030s, extending its reach deeper into the Indian Ocean Region, while its ally Pakistan will continue upgrading its own underwater fleet.Furthermore, the stark reality of the Navy’s SSK operational crisis is neither new nor unforeseen.It presently operates around 16–17 SSKs, including six recently commissioned French-origin Kalvari (Scorpene)-class boats, around seven remaining Russian-origin Kilo-class submarines and four German-origin HDW Type-209s. However, most of these – excluding the Kalvari-class platforms – are between 30 and 40 years old, sustained through repeated refits and upgrades that increasingly resemble institutional life support measures or jugaad – improvisation-rather than genuine force modernisation.Besides, several Kilo-class submarines are likely to be phased out between 2025 and 2030, while the Type-209 fleet will progressively retire soon after. In effect, much of the Navy’s existing conventional underwater capability will be drastically reduced within the next decade, as extending the technical life of the majority of these SSK assets remained operationally and financially untenable.“Such a situation leaves the Indian Navy confronting an uncomfortable reality that it is no longer expanding its SSK arm in any meaningful sense via P-75I, but merely attempting to somehow manage its decline” said the aforementioned veteran. SSK numbers, he warned, were shrinking, induction timelines were slipping and the gap between planning and operational reality keeps widening.The Indian Naval Ship’s underwater platform crisis was never intended to unfold so starkly. Its 30-year submarine construction plan, approved in 1999 in the aftermath of the Kargil conflict, laid out a coherent roadmap to induct 24 SSKs – later reduced to 18 – through parallel production lines under Project-75 (P-75) and P-75I. The objective was straightforward: ensure continuity of construction, steadily replace ageing SSKs and avoid capability gaps.Within this framework, P-75 was conceived as the initial production line for licence-building six SSKs in India with foreign collaboration. After a prolonged, nearly two-decade gestation – including a roughly eight-year year delay – the line was finally completed in 2024–25, with Mazagon delivering six Kalvari submarines designed by France’s Naval Group.In the meantime, the follow-on P-75I programme received the defence ministry’s approval in 2007 through an Acceptance of Necessity – the first step in a multi-stage procurement process – following extended deliberations that had begun decades earlier, in the late 1990s. It, too, was envisaged as a relatively straightforward programme to locally build six advanced SSKs with AIP and land-attack capability in collaboration with an overseas vendor.Over time, however, the trajectory of P-75I came to reveal almost every structural weakness embedded within India’s defence procurement system: service and bureaucratic drift, unrealistic qualitative requirements or equipment specs-contractual rigidity, repeated procedural resets, vendor withdrawals and, above all, the government’s inability to translate strategic urgency into timely acquisition.Also read: Not Just the MoD, the Military’s QR Overreach Is Also Culpable For Impeding ModernisationAt the core of these obstacles lay the Indian Navy’s steadily expanding – and shifting – qualitative requirements, which repeatedly pushed for increasingly advanced submarines featuring cutting-edge stealth, sophisticated combat systems, advanced AIP and land-attack features, extensive localisation and deep technology transfer commitments. In tandem, the defence ministry imposed stringent contractual liability clauses that effectively made the foreign design partner fully responsible for the final platform even after commissioning, despite it having no direct executive control over the Indian shipyard constructing the SSKs.The resulting combination proved deeply unattractive to leading foreign vendors. And, over time, submarine manufacturers from Japan, Sweden and even Russia either declined participation outright or quietly exited the competition, citing evolving requirements, unrealistic conditions, excessive liability exposure and impractical technology-transfer obligations.A ‘modular construction workshop’ at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders’ submarine manufacturing unit in Mumbai. Source: www.mazagondock.inThe structural contradictions within P-75I became publicly evident in 2022, when Andrey Baranov, deputy director general of the Rubin Design Bureau – Russia’s premier submarine design house – bluntly described the programme as “unrealistic” while speaking at the Army-2022 exhibition in Moscow.Baranov argued that the timelines stipulated in the MoDs 2021 P-75I Request for Proposal (RfP) bore little relation to the technologies being demanded by the IN. According to him, the IN’s QRs effectively amounted to requiring a “brand new submarine type” incorporating advanced stealth, sophisticated weapons, AIP systems and high survivability standards – capabilities that no global shipbuilder possessed in a ready configuration.Baranov’s criticism echoed former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s earlier remarks regarding “QR overreach” by the Indian military. Speaking publicly in 2015, Parrikar had observed that some Indian military requirements resembled specifications drawn from “Marvel comic books” – technologically unrealistic, excessively ambitious and detached from what industry could realistically deliver within practical cost and timeline parameters.After years of drift, the P-75(I) programme eventually coalesced around the Thyssenkrupp–Mazagon consortium in early 2025, following the elimination of the competing joint venture led by Larsen & Toubro in partnership with Navantia, Spain’s state-owned ship and submarine builder. However, even this narrowing of the field did not translate into urgency or a rapid conclusion of negotiations. Talks remained bogged down over technology transfer, liability clauses, workshare distribution, indigenisation targets and intellectual property concerns. Concurrently, the ministry of defence and the Indian Navy continued to press for deeper design know-how transfer, further deferring the deal’s finalisation.Also read: INS Vagsheer’s Delayed Commissioning Highlights Indian Navy’s Submarine WoesUnsurprisingly, this stagnation was not confined to P-75I alone. Even the comparatively successful induction of the six Kalvari-class submarines under the earlier P-75 programme had been severely disrupted by planning and contractual lapses, including the omission of critical components such as engines, generators and specialised steel from the original 2005 contract. These seemingly obvious oversights triggered a cascade of additional approvals, cost escalations and schedule delays, ultimately pushing submarine induction timelines back by several years.The P-75 programme suffered further embarrassment following flooding incidents at Mazagon’s dockyard and the subsequent cancellation of its Black Shark heavyweight torpedoes (HWTs) after the 2013–14 AgustaWestland helicopter scandal. This planned acquisition of the Italian-origin torpedoes from WASS was scrapped following corruption allegations involving its parent company, Finmeccanica, over the procurement of 12 AW101 helicopters.As an interim measure, the submarines were fitted with older German-origin SUT torpedoes acquired in the 1980s, which naval officers themselves regarded as a suboptimal substitute. Ironically, the MoD has, in recent months, moved back towards acquiring the same Black Shark torpedoes, as the submarines had originally been configured around them.The 2016 Scorpene data leak followed, when over 22,000 pages of sensitive submarine-related information relating to stealth characteristics, acoustic signatures and combat systems of the French boat were reportedly leaked internationally. Though the Indian Navy publicly downplayed operational compromise, the episode reinforced concerns regarding its programme oversight, security management and institutional vulnerability.It is against this backdrop of repeated delays, oversight gaps and ongoing execution problems that the P-75I programme is now being presented by the Ministry of Defence and the Indian Navy as a ‘hard-won’ institutional success. And, many years later, when the sixth P-75I boat is commissioned – closer to 2040 – the earlier frustrations, resets and procedural obstacles detours will likely have faded into the background, and the programme will be lauded by the upcoming generation of naval officers as a success story of persistence and delivery.Speeches will, no doubt, at the time, praise strategic foresight, while officials congratulate themselves on procedural efficiency; but somewhere in the background, another urgently needed naval programme will already be entering its third decade of file movement – a throwback to the very delays and bureaucratic inertia that had defined the P-75I programme.