INS Malvan Commissioned: Second Mahe-Class Submarine-Hunter Joins the Indian Navy

The Indian Navy commissioned INS Malvan on 22 July 2026, adding a second Mahe-class Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) to its fleet. Built by Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in Kochi, the vessel is the second of eight Mahe-class ships being delivered by the yard and, counting the parallel Arnala-class boats being built by GRSE, the sixth of sixteen shallow-water submarine-hunters the Navy has ordered in all.

Malvan takes its name from the coastal town in Maharashtra, in keeping with the naval tradition of naming this class after strategically important ports and harbours along India's coastline. Beyond the ceremony, its significance is twofold: it plugs a specific capability gap in coastal anti-submarine defence, and it does so with a ship that is more than 80 percent indigenous by content.

What an ASW shallow water craft is for

Most of the Navy's attention — and most public coverage — goes to blue-water assets: destroyers, frigates, submarines and the carrier task force that operate far out to sea. But the shallow, cluttered waters close to the coast are their own tactical problem. Sonar behaves differently over a shallow, uneven seabed; a small, quiet submarine can loiter near harbours, chokepoints and shipping lanes; and large warships are ill-suited to hunting it there.

The ASW-SWC programme exists to fill exactly that role. These are compact, agile craft optimised for underwater surveillance and anti-submarine warfare in littoral waters, replacing the ageing Abhay-class corvettes. Malvan and its sisters are designed to detect, track and, if required, engage submarines operating close to shore, and to conduct subsidiary tasks such as low-intensity maritime operations, coastal surveillance and mine-laying. In effect, they are the Navy's dedicated near-shore submarine-hunters, freeing larger platforms for deep-water missions.

The ship, by the numbers

INS Malvan is a roughly 900-tonne craft about 78 metres long, with a beam of around 11 metres and a shallow draft that lets it operate close inshore. Water-jet propulsion gives it a top speed of about 25 knots, a range on the order of 1,800 nautical miles at cruising speed and an endurance of roughly a fortnight at sea, crewed by a complement of around 57 officers and sailors.

For its size it is well armed for the anti-submarine mission. The craft carries lightweight torpedoes and an ASW rocket launcher for prosecuting underwater contacts, backed by hull-mounted and low-frequency sensors for detection and torpedo-decoy systems for self-protection, along with a mine-laying capability. The sensor and weapon fit draws on India's defence industrial base — the DRDO, Bharat Electronics (BEL) and private-sector partners including Larsen & Toubro and Mahindra have contributed subsystems across the class — which is what allows the Navy to claim such a high indigenous-content figure.

Why the indigenous content matters

An 80-percent-plus indigenous ship is not just a talking point. Warships spend decades in service, and the ability to source spares, upgrade sensors and integrate new weapons domestically over that life cycle is a strategic capability in its own right. Cochin Shipyard's serial production of the Mahe class — one hull following another down the same line — is precisely the kind of repeatable, at-scale defence manufacturing that India's Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliance) policy has been trying to build, as opposed to one-off flagship projects.

It also matters industrially. A steady drumbeat of ASW-SWC commissionings keeps two shipyards — CSL in Kochi and GRSE in Kolkata — and their supplier networks busy, sustaining skills and cash flow across the ecosystem rather than in bursts.

A programme gathering pace

Malvan is the latest in a run of indigenous commissionings that has made 2026 a notably busy year for the Navy's warship-induction pipeline. With eight Mahe-class craft due from Cochin Shipyard and eight Arnala-class from GRSE, the sixteen-boat ASW-SWC programme is steadily rebuilding the Navy's coastal anti-submarine screen at a time when submarine activity across the Indian Ocean region has drawn increasing scrutiny.

For now, INS Malvan joins the fleet as a modest but purposeful addition — a small ship built for a specific, unglamorous job, and a marker of how far India's naval shipbuilding has moved towards doing that job with hardware of its own.

Sources

• Indian Navy Commissions INS Malvan, the 2nd of Mahe-class ASW SWC — Naval News
• Indian Navy Commissions INS Malvan, Second Mahe-Class ASW Shallow Water Craft — SSBCrack
• What Is the Indian Navy's Malvan? Features, Role, Commissioning Date and Importance — Indian Masterminds
• Indigenous INS Malvan Commissioned into Indian Navy — ETV Bharat