India has signed a ` 913-crore deal with Germany’s ThyssenkKrupp Marine Systems to retrofit anti-ship Harpoon missiles on two Shishumar class submarines. The retrofitting of the new weapon suite will be carried out on INS Shankush and INS Shalki at Naval Dockyard, Mumbai and is backed by a training package to support and operate the system.
The Defence Acquisition Council(DAC) had given the go-ahead for the proposal in 2014 for fitting these Harpoons on the submarines built with German collaboration. These HDW submarines were inducted into the Navy in the 1980s and have already undergone mid life upgrades in the last few years.
The US had in 2014 decided to sell anti-ship Harpoon missiles to India to boost its defence capability and strengthen India-US strategic ties. The entire package under the foreign military sale route includes a dozen odd UGM-84l Harpoon Block II Encapsulated Missiles, 10 UTM-84l Harpoon Encapsulated Training missiles, and two Encapsulated Harpoon certification training vehicles.