New Delhi: The Indian Navy took delivery of Samarthak, on Thursday, the first vessel in a new class of multi-purpose vessels built by Larsen & Toubro at its Kattupalli shipyard near Chennai. The ship has more than 75 per cent indigenous content and will serve primarily as a trial and evaluation platform, besides undertaking surveillance, offshore patrol and disaster-relief missions.
Samarthak is the first of two multi-purpose vessels ordered under a ₹887 crore “Buy (Indian)” contract signed between the Ministry of Defence and L&T on March 25, 2022. The original contract announcement said deliveries were scheduled to begin in May 2025, although the government has not explained the subsequent revision in the timeline.
The vessel was launched on October 14, 2024, at Kattupalli, with the ceremony presided over by the-then chief of the naval staff, Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi. The Navy said the name Samarthak reflects the ship’s intended function as a dependable enabler capable of supporting several different missions.
The MoD’s delivery announcement said the vessel had been engineered for maritime surveillance and reconnaissance, offshore patrol and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. The announcement concerned the ship’s delivery to the Navy; a date for its formal commissioning into service was not disclosed.
What Samarthak is designed to do
L&T describes the vessel as 107 metres long and 18.6 metres wide, with a displacement exceeding 3,750 tonnes. The Navy’s launch notice, however, listed slightly different dimensions of 106 metres by 16.8 metres and said the ship was designed to attain a maximum speed of 15 knots, leaving the precise beam inconsistently reported in official public records.
The vessel’s principal role will be to support the testing and evaluation of weapons, sensors and other naval systems under development. According to the Indian Navy’s launch announcement, it can tow ships, launch and recover different types of targets, operate uncrewed autonomous vehicles and function as a trials platform for indigenous equipment.
The Ministry of Defence’s 2022 contract statement provided further detail, saying the vessels would support the launch and recovery of torpedoes as well as aerial, surface and underwater targets used during gunnery and anti-submarine warfare exercises. They are also intended for salvage support, logistics missions to India’s island territories and humanitarian operations with a limited hospital capability.
L&T has additionally listed maritime patrol, sea-pollution response and the launch and recovery of surface and aerial assets among the class’s roles. Combining these functions on one ship provides the Navy with a dedicated platform for trials, training and support tasks that might otherwise require the deployment of several specialized vessels or operational warships.
The ship was designed at L&T’s Warship Design Centre in Chennai and constructed at Kattupalli, making the programme an important test of private-sector capacity to design and deliver complex naval platforms. Its indigenous content of more than 75 per cent also indicates that a substantial proportion of its systems, equipment and construction inputs were sourced within India, although the ministry did not provide a component-wise breakdown.
The second vessel in the programme, Utkarsh, was launched at Kattupalli on January 13, 2025. Neither the Navy nor L&T has announced its delivery date.