An Agosta 90
B submarine sits at Pakistan’s Navy Dockyard in Karachi
Pakistan’s Minister for Defence Production Rana
Tanveer Hussain told at the inauguration of the Defence Export Promotion
Organisation (DEPO) Display Centre in Islamabad that the deal for the
acquisition of submarines from China had been finalized and four of them would
be built in Karachi.
He said construction of the submarines would
simultaneously begin in Pakistan and China.
China, he said, would transfer the technology to
Pakistan for submarine construction.
The implementation of the agreement would augment
the existing submarine-related capacity. One of the three Agosta 90-B
submarines in Navy’s fleet — PNS Hamza commissioned in 2008 — was assembled at
the Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works. The other two Agosta 90-B
submarines — PNS Khalid and PNS Saad — were also indigenously overhauled and
retrofitted with air-independent propulsion (AIP) systems in 2011.
The three Agosta 90-B submarines of French design
form the core of Pakistan’s current submarine fleet that also includes two
ageing Agosta-70 submarines.
The deal was for Yuan-class Type-041
diesel-electric submarines equipped with AIP systems.
Navy has been pursuing different options for
expanding its submarine fleet. Naval officials say that more submarines were
needed to address force imbalance with India, which too is increasing and
modernising its fleet of submarines.
Pakistan had earlier explored the options of buying
submarines from France and Germany, but those deals did not materialise.
The shipyard is planned to be constructed by
foreign investors on build-operate-transfer basis. Asia Times News
& Features
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