GRSE hands over Amini, the fifth of eight Arnala-class submarine hunters built for the Navy's coastal waters

Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) has handed over Amini, the fifth of eight Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) it is building for the Indian Navy. The handover took place on 5 November 2026 at Kattupalli in Tamil Nadu, where Rear Admiral Gautam Marwaha, Chief Staff Officer (Technical) at Headquarters Eastern Naval Command, accepted the vessel on the Navy's behalf.

The delivery is routine in one sense: it is one more hull off a production line that has been running for several years. But it also marks steady progress on one of the Navy's quieter priorities, which is rebuilding its ability to find and track submarines close to the coast, where large frigates and destroyers are poorly suited to operate.

What was delivered

Amini is a submarine hunter designed for littoral waters. According to reports of the handover, the ship is about 77.6 metres long and draws only about 2.7 metres of water. That shallow draught is the point of the design: it lets the craft work in coastal shelves, harbour approaches and near-shore sea lanes that are too shallow or too cramped for bigger warships.

The ship is propelled by marine diesel engines driving waterjets rather than conventional propellers. Waterjets help with manoeuvrability in shallow water and reduce the risk of propeller damage close to the seabed. The Arnala-class ships are reported to be the largest waterjet-propelled vessels the Indian Navy has acquired.

For its core mission of sub-surface surveillance, search and attack, Amini carries a combat management system, lightweight torpedoes and anti-submarine rockets. The Defence Ministry also lists sonar among the class’s equipment.

The Defence Ministry reports over 80 per cent indigenous content.

The programme behind the ship

The Ministry of Defence signed the contract for eight ASW-SWCs with GRSE on 29 April 2019. GRSE has partnered with Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on the work, with construction split between GRSE's Kolkata facilities and L&T's shipyard at Kattupalli near Chennai. Amini itself was launched at Kattupalli on 16 November 2023, so it has taken just under three years to go from launch to delivery.

The GRSE order is half of a larger 16-ship programme. Cochin Shipyard is building the other eight, which are known as the Mahe class. Together the two classes are meant to replace the Navy's ageing Abhay-class corvettes, which were designed in the 1980s.

GRSE's first ship, INS Arnala, was delivered on 8 May 2025 and is now in service as the lead ship of the class. The fourth, Agray, was delivered on 30 March 2026. With Amini now handed over, three more GRSE-built craft remain.

The ship's name comes from Amini Island in the Lakshadweep archipelago. It also revives the name of an earlier INS Amini, a Petya-class corvette that was decommissioned in 2002.

Delivery is not the same as commissioning. The cited Defence Ministry release records the delivery milestone.

A milestone for GRSE

For the Kolkata-based defence shipyard, Amini is the 119th warship it has built and the 81st delivered to the Indian Navy. It is also the fourth warship GRSE has delivered in 2026, which is a sign that the yard's delivery rate is picking up.

The timing is notable. Just three days earlier, on 2 November, the Ministry of Defence signed contracts worth ₹53,866.50 crore for eight Next Generation Corvettes, which will be designed by the Navy and built by state-run shipyards. GRSE will build five of them and Goa Shipyard the other three. Steady deliveries of programmes such as the ASW-SWC are part of how a shipyard shows it can take on that kind of order book.

Why shallow-water anti-submarine capability matters

India has a long coastline and extensive island territories, and much of the water close to shore is shallow. Submarines operating in these waters are hard to detect, because sound behaves unpredictably in shallow, noisy coastal seas. Large anti-submarine frigates are expensive to risk close inshore and are often not the right tool for the job.

Smaller, purpose-built craft like Amini fill that gap. They can patrol harbour approaches and coastal sea lanes, carry sonar and combat systems tuned for shallow water, and attack a submarine directly with torpedoes and rockets. In wartime they would help keep ports and coastal shipping open; in peacetime they provide a constant, lower-cost presence for surveillance and training.

The larger picture

The ASW-SWC programme is a good example of how India's naval build-up now works. The design is Indian, the hull is built in India, much of the equipment is sourced domestically, and a public-sector shipyard works alongside a private one. The model of GRSE and L&T splitting the work spreads capacity across two yards, and it gives the private sector experience in building complex warships.

That experience matters as the Navy's order book grows. Beyond the Next Generation Corvettes, Indian yards are building destroyers, frigates, survey vessels and support ships. Each programme that delivers on time strengthens the case for building more at home rather than buying abroad, and for pushing indigenous content higher in the systems that go on board, from combat management systems to sonars and weapons.

For now, the immediate task is simpler: finishing the last three GRSE-built craft and getting all 16 shallow-water submarine hunters into service, so the Navy finally has a modern answer to the coastal submarine threat.

Sources

• ThePrint: https://theprint.in/india/grse-delivers-fifth-anti-submarine-warfare-shallow-water-craft-to-navy/3091530/
• Maritime Gateway: https://www.maritimegateway.com/grse-delivers-amini-to-strengthen-indian-navys-coastal-anti-submarine-fleet/
• DefenceWatch: https://www.defencewatch.in/naval/grse-delivers-fifth-anti-submarine-warfare-shallow-water-craft-ins-amini-to-indian-navy
• PSU Watch: https://psuwatch.com/defencewatch/grse-delivers-5th-asw-swc-warship-amini-to-indian-navy
• Bharat Shakti: https://bharatshakti.in/indian-navy-gets-fifth-shallow-water-anti-submarine-craft-amini/
• Indian Masterminds: https://indianmasterminds.com/news/grse-delivers-fifth-asw-swc-amini-indian-navy-119-warship-milestone-248609/
• Wikipedia, Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Submarine_Warfare_Shallow_Water_Craft
• Wikipedia, INS Arnala (2022): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Arnala_(2022)
• Business Today, Next Generation Corvette contracts: https://www.businesstoday.in/india/story/big-boost-to-indian-navy-mod-signs-rs-53866-crore-contracts-for-8-indigenous-warships-565138-2026-11-02

• https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2333404&lang=1&reg=3

• https://idrw.org/grse-delivers-fifth-asw-swc-amini-indian-navy-119-warships/