Indian Navy to commission second Mahe-class warship Malvan on July 22

New Delhi: The Indian Navy will commission Malvan, the second ship in the Mahe-class of anti-submarine-warfare shallow-water craft (ASW-SWC), on July 22, the service said in a media release on Thursday. The ceremony will be presided over by the chief of the air staff, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh.

The flag officer commanding in chief (FOC-in-C), Western Naval Command, Vice Admiral Sanjay Vatsayan, will also be present, along with senior naval officers, representatives of Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL), Kochi, veterans and other invited guests.

Malvan was built by CSL under the Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) programme for indigenous warship construction, and has more than 80 per cent indigenous content. It is the second vessel of an eight-ship class being built by CSL, following the lead ship, Mahe, which was commissioned at the Naval Dockyard, Mumbai, on November 24, 2025.

A shallow-water hunter

The Mahe-class ships are designed to operate in coastal and littoral waters, where larger warships struggle to detect submarines because of shallow depths and heavy background noise. Their primary roles include anti-submarine search-and-attack missions, coastal surveillance, mine-laying and search-and-rescue.

Each vessel is about 78 metres long and 11.36 metres wide, with a draught of roughly 2.7 metres and a displacement of between 900 and 1,100 tonnes. Propulsion comes from three diesel engines generating about 6 megawatts of power, driving waterjets rather than conventional propellers – making the class the largest Indian warships to date to use pump-jet propulsion. Top speed is around 25 knots (46.3 kilometres per hour), with a range of about 1,800 nautical miles (3333.6 kilometres) at 14 knots and an endurance of 14 days at sea.

For submarine detection, the ships carry the indigenously developed Abhay hull-mounted sonar, built by Bharat Electronics Limited to a design from the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory, along with a towed low-frequency variable-depth sonar developed jointly by CFF Fluid Control and Germany’s Atlas Elektronik.

Weapons fit includes a forward RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket launcher, triple torpedo tube launchers on either side firing indigenous lightweight torpedoes, mine-laying rails, and 30mm and 12.7mm guns for close-range defence.

Named after Maratha-era port

Malvan takes its name from the coastal town of Malvan in Maharashtra, historically associated with the Maratha Navy under Chhatrapati Shivaji. It is the second Indian Navy vessel to carry the name, after an earlier minesweeper, INS Malvan, which served between 1983 and 2003.

The Mahe-class is one of two parallel ASW-SWC programmes ordered by the defence ministry in 2019, each covering eight ships, at a combined contract value of roughly ₹6,311 crore per shipyard. The second programme, the Arnala-class, is being built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers in partnership with Larsen & Toubro. Together, the 16 vessels are intended to replace the Navy’s Abhay-class corvettes, which have been in service since 1989–91.