🛡 Security & DefenceMAINS · GS3.12 · GS3.20

Navy gets Agray, fourth indigenous ASW craft

GRSE Kolkata delivers the fourth of eight anti-submarine warfare shallow water craft to the Indian Navy, with over 80% indigenous content.

What happened

On 30 March 2026 at Kolkata, the Indian Navy took delivery of ‘Agray’, the fourth of eight Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW SWC).
The vessel was indigenously designed and built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata, a Defence Public Sector Undertaking under the Ministry of Defence.
The ship was designed and constructed to the classification rules of the Indian Register of Shipping (IRS), the domestic ship-classification society — a marker of indigenous design assurance rather than reliance on a foreign classification body.
At roughly 77 metres, the ASW SWC vessels are described as the largest Indian Naval warships propelled by waterjets.
Induction will augment the Navy's anti-submarine and mine-warfare capabilities and its coastal surveillance in shallow littoral waters.
The delivery carries over 80% indigenous content, advanced under the Government's Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliance) vision for defence shipbuilding.

Background & context

The ASW SWC is a class of small, agile warships built for one specialised job: hunting submarines and laying or countering mines in shallow, near-shore waters where larger destroyers and frigates cannot manoeuvre freely. India operates a layered anti-submarine warfare (ASW) architecture — long-range maritime patrol aircraft, ASW corvettes and frigates for the open ocean, and these shallow-water craft for the coastal and littoral belt. Agray belongs to that coastal tier.

The eight-ship ASW SWC programme is being executed by GRSE, Kolkata, which has long been India's principal yard for surface combatants and patrol vessels. The class is purpose-built so that the Navy can phase out older, ageing coastal ASW assets while raising the indigenous content of every hull. Agray is the fourth hull in this run of eight; its delivery continues the steady, serialised induction that a multi-ship class is meant to deliver — design once, build repeatedly, learn and indigenise across hulls.

The name itself carries lineage. Agray is described as a reincarnation of the erstwhile INS Agray, which was the fourth ship of the 1241 PE Class of patrol vessels and was decommissioned in 2017. By reviving a retired ship's name, the Navy follows its long-standing tradition of perpetuating distinguished legacy names across generations of vessels — a practice that lets a famous name and its battle honours live on in a new, more capable hull. The convention matters for an aspirant because it explains why a "new" ship can carry an old, familiar name: the platform is new, but the name is inherited.

The design choice deserves a closer look. The defining technical feature of this class — and the line most likely to be lifted into a question — is waterjet propulsion. A waterjet draws in water and expels it through a nozzle to create thrust, in place of the conventional screw propeller and rudder. The advantage in shallow, near-shore waters is real: a waterjet has no exposed propeller blades to foul or to be damaged in low-draft conditions, gives the craft high manoeuvrability and a shallow operating draft, and lets it work close to harbours, river mouths and the coastline. That is exactly the environment in which a coastal anti-submarine craft must operate, which is why the class pairs waterjet propulsion with shallow-water SONAR. The PIB note flags that these ~77-metre ships are the largest Indian Naval warships using waterjets — a precise, examinable superlative worth fixing in memory.

For Prelims

Entity: ‘Agray’ — the 4th of eight Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW SWC).
Builder: Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata — a Ministry of Defence shipyard; the ship was indigenously designed and built.
Classification: built to the rules of the Indian Register of Shipping (IRS), India's own classification society.
Propulsion: waterjet-propelled — the class is the largest Indian Naval warship using waterjet propulsion, at about 77 metres in length.
Armament & sensors: Lightweight Torpedoes, indigenous Rocket Launchers, and shallow-water SONAR for detecting and engaging underwater threats.
Roles: anti-submarine warfare, mine warfare, and coastal surveillance in the littoral zone.
Indigenous content: over 80%, under Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
Lineage: revives the name of the earlier INS Agray, fourth ship of the 1241 PE Class patrol vessels, decommissioned in 2017.

For UPSC: Agray = GRSE-built 4th ASW SWC, the largest waterjet-propelled Indian warship (~77 m), with 80%+ indigenous content, built to Indian Register of Shipping rules, for anti-submarine, mine-warfare and coastal-surveillance roles.

What it is NOT: An ASW SWC is not a submarine, a frigate, or a corvette — it is a small shallow-water surface craft that hunts submarines in coastal waters. It is propelled by waterjets, not conventional screw propellers, and it is distinct from the Navy's deeper-water ASW corvettes (the Kamorta/Project 28 class) which operate farther out to sea. The name "Agray" is also not a brand-new naming — it deliberately re-uses a decommissioned ship's name.

The full set (so the comparisons survive)

The class: eight ASW SWC ships; Agray is the fourth delivered. The series is being built and delivered hull by hull by GRSE.
The yard's family: GRSE, Kolkata is also associated with India's anti-submarine corvettes and other surface combatants and patrol craft — the wider Indian indigenous-shipbuilding effort that includes other Defence yards such as Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (Mumbai), Cochin Shipyard, Hindustan Shipyard and Goa Shipyard.
Where it sits in ASW: the shallow-water craft handle the littoral/coastal ASW belt; larger ASW corvettes and frigates and long-range maritime patrol aircraft cover the open ocean. Agray is the coastal layer of that stack.
Self-reliance frame: the delivery is one data point in the broader push to indigenise warship building — design (in-house), classification (IRS), and 80%+ domestic content all reinforce the same Aatmanirbhar Bharat theme.

Peer comparison & the yard family

To place Agray against one peer: the ASW SWC is the coastal/littoral answer to the submarine threat, while the Navy's deeper-water anti-submarine work is carried by larger ASW corvettes — most notably the Kamorta-class (Project 28), also built by GRSE, which are full corvettes displacing several thousand tonnes and operating well out to sea. The contrast is instructive for a "consider the statements" question: the shallow-water craft is smaller, shallower-draft, waterjet-driven and built to work near the coast; the corvette is larger, ocean-going and screw-propelled. They are complementary layers of the same anti-submarine architecture, not substitutes for one another.

On the builder, GRSE (Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers), Kolkata is a Ministry of Defence shipyard and one of India's premier warship-building yards. India's other major Defence and shipbuilding yards include Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (Mumbai, associated with destroyers, frigates and submarines), Cochin Shipyard (which delivered India's first indigenous aircraft carrier), Goa Shipyard and Hindustan Shipyard. Knowing which yard builds what is a recurring pairing theme: Agray and its ASW SWC class sit firmly in the GRSE column. The IRS classification, the in-house design and the 80%-plus indigenous content together mark how far the domestic warship supply chain — hull, propulsion integration, weapons and sensors — has matured.

Why it matters

Submarines are among the hardest threats a navy faces: they are quiet, hidden, and able to deny large stretches of sea to surface ships. India's maritime neighbourhood has seen rising submarine activity, which makes credible anti-submarine warfare in coastal and shallow waters a real operational need rather than a notional one. The ASW SWC class is built precisely for that gap — small enough and shallow-draft enough to operate close to harbours, choke points and the coastline, where the threat from quiet diesel-electric submarines is highest and where larger combatants are less suited to work.

The second significance is industrial. A warship delivered with over 80% indigenous content, designed in-house, classed by the Indian Register of Shipping, and armed with indigenous rocket launchers shows the depth that India's domestic defence-manufacturing ecosystem has reached. Each repeated hull in an eight-ship class lets the yard and its vendor base move further up the learning curve, deepen the supplier network, and reduce dependence on imported platforms and systems — sustaining jobs and engineering capability at home while conserving foreign exchange. Serial indigenous production, not a one-off prestige build, is what turns self-reliance from a slogan into installed capacity.

Finally, the revival of the Agray name links capability to continuity: the Navy keeps a recognised legacy name in service, carrying forward institutional identity and battle traditions into a more modern and more indigenous hull.

For Mains

Exemplification

Agray is a concrete, datable example of indigenous defence manufacturing under Aatmanirbhar Bharat — a warship designed and built in India by a domestic Defence shipyard with over 80% indigenous content and built to Indian Register of Shipping rules.

Substantiation

Use the hard facts — fourth of eight ASW SWC, ~77 m, waterjet-propelled, 80%+ indigenous, lightweight torpedoes and shallow-water SONAR — to ground arguments on indigenisation of defence platforms and the maturing of the domestic shipbuilding base.

Position

Reflects the Government's stated policy of self-reliance in defence production, reducing import dependence by building combatants and their systems domestically.

Problematisation

The very need to revive ageing coastal ASW assets and indigenise sensors and weapons points to the gap this class fills — credible, low-cost, shallow-water anti-submarine capability close to India's coastline amid rising regional submarine activity.

Deploys into: indigenisation of technology and developing new technology (GS3.12); roles of security forces and defence-industrial self-reliance (GS3.20); India's maritime security and the littoral threat environment.

Ministry of Defence · 2026-03-30 · PRID 2247087 · PIB source ↗

Related: GRSE indigenous shipbuilding · Security & Defence · this week's cards