The INS Tushil joins the Western Fleet, enhancing naval capabilities and strategic focus in the Indo-Pacific amid growing tensions with China and Pakistan.
India has bolstered its naval fleet with the commissioning of an advanced frigate built in Russia, underscoring New Delhi’s strategic focus on enhancing maritime security amid rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific and growing naval competition with China and Pakistan, analysts say.
The formal commissioning of the INS Tushil occurred on December 9 at the Yantar shipyard in Kaliningrad. Senior officials from India and Russia, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, attended.
Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar, a former Indian naval officer and director of the Delhi-based think tank Society for Policy Studies, said the induction of a “modern frigate” like INS Tushil, will enhance the Indian Navy’s surface combat capabilities, “particularly electronic warfare”.
The INS Tushil is the seventh Talwar-class frigate built for the Indian Navy. The initial trio, constructed at the Baltiysky Zavod shipyard in St. Petersburg, entered service from 2003 to 2004. The next three, made at the Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad, were delivered from 2012 to 2013.
According to the Ministry of Defence, the INS Tushil is a 125-metre-long, 3,900-tonne ship with a new design that “provides it with enhanced stealth features and better stability characteristics.”
Upon commissioning, the INS Tushil will join the “Sword Arm of the Indian Navy”, the Western Fleet, under the Western Naval Command, the ministry said.
It will rank among “the most technologically advanced frigates in the world”, it added.
The INS Tushil is a guided missile frigate serving a different role than submarines, Dongkeun Lee, a PhD candidate at Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, told This Week in Asia.
“Many of India’s nuclear submarines are designed to address threats posed by China. INS Tushil will primarily support the Western Naval Command’s mission of countering Pakistan and maintaining a liberal order within the Arabian Sea and the Western Indian Ocean,” Lee said.
Due to the close ties between Pakistan and China and Beijing’s interest in using Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, the INS Tushil will strengthen India’s maritime control in the Indian Ocean, Lee added.
The INS Tushil is one of four follow-on frigates India contracted in 2018. Two frigates. Two frigates, the INS Tushil and INS Tamala, were built by Russia at the Yantar Shipyard, while the remaining two are being constructed at the Goa Shipyard in India through technology transfer. Notably, the frigates’ gas turbines are manufactured in Ukraine.
