I think India can provide a lot of assistance including design assistance.
What is the expected price of the P-17 A? It looks mighty good.
Dont know, but one can imagine that is even surpassing P-15B Destroyer , they just calling it frigate. But with weapon system and sensors, Command and Control structure, almost all are same.
Let me post some article about P-17 A and P-15 A, from there you can imagine all things.
This is from 2011
In what can only be described as joyous ‘Deepavali-eve’ tidings for the Indian Navy (IN), the Govt of India’s Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) earlier last week finally approved the Ministry of Defence’s proposal for kick-starting the Project 17A guided-missile frigate’s (FFG) design-cum-construction programme, which is already running four years behind schedule. Consequently, the MoD-owned and Mumbai-based Mazagon Docks Ltd (MDL), teamed with Fincantieri, has at long-last, received both the green light and the much-required funds required for commencing work on the Project 17A FFG programme, which now calls for the Project 17A FFG to be an advanced derivative of the existing 5,600-tonne Project 17 Shivalik-class FFG, and NOT a brand-new warship design outsourced from abroad. While MDL will be the lead yard for both detailed design and construction of the first four Project 17A FFGs, Kolkata-based Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers will build the remaining three FFGs. It is estimated that the first Project 17A FFG will be launched five years (within 60 months, or by 2017) after its keel-laying ceremony (to be held in the latter half of next year), followed by the remaining six FFGs being delivered every successive year through to 2022.
The CCNS decision, which is likely to cause dismay to foreign shipbuilders like Fincantieri of Italy, France’s Direction des Constructions Navales (DCNS), Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, Russia’s Severnoye Design Bureau/Admiralty Shipyards, Spain’s Navantia, the UK’s BAE Systems, and South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, is likely to result in the Project 17 FFG’s design being modified to accommodate new-generation weapon systems like the Barak-2 MR-SAM/EL/M-2248 MF-STAR combination (see:
http://trishul-trident.blogspot.com/2011/04/mf-star-deliveries-for-project-15a-ddgs_07.html) instead of the Cashmere area air defence system comprising the 24 rounds of 40km-range 9M317M Shtil-1 MR-SAMs, 3S-90 missile launcher, four MR-90 Orekh target illuminators, and the Salyut FSUE-built E-band MR-760 Fregat M2EM 3-D radar; plus BrahMos vertically-launched supersonic multi-role cruise missiles instead of the the eight Novator-built 3M54E Klub-N supersonic 220km-range anti-ship cruise missiles. The crew complement will likely be reduced from the existing 257 (including 35 officers) to about 110 by introducing high levels of automation, which will translate into a savings of around 20% in operational costs and higher operational availability of the warships. The Project 17A FFG’s superstructure will also make extensive use of composites similar to what’s now being done on board the latter two of the four Project 28 Kamorta-class ASW corvettes now under fabrication by GRSE.
The decision to fast-track the project 17A FFG construction programme comes close on the heels of a major upgrade undertaken by MDL of its integrated shipbuilding processes for FFGs, which will become idle once the third and last Project 17 FFG—INS Sahyadri—is commissioned into service early next year. Therefore, in order to make optimum utilisation of its warship-building capacities and capabilities, the MoD, in an unusual show of pragmatism, had last month decided to fast-track the indigenous warship construction roadmap.
Thus far, MDL’s infrastructure modernisation plans have moved ahead in four areas: installation of a 300-tonne Goliath crane, construction of a new modular workshop for FFGs, and fabrication of a wet-basin for the outfitting of FFGs and DDGs. All three of these will be ready for usage by early next year and will make MDL the first MoD-owned DPSU to undertake integrated shipbuilding concurrently for two lines of warships and two lines of submarines: the seven Project 17A FFGs, the four 6,800-tonne Project 15B guided-missile destroyers (DDG), and the six Scorpene SSKs and the yet-to-be-ordered Project 75I SSKs. In addition to all this, MDL has also built two more modular workshops—one for warship-building (the four Project 15B DDGs) and the other for submarine construction—at the Alcock Yard, which is adjacent to MDL’s main yard. Consequently, by late next year, MDL will have two dedicated submarine construction facilities—one at its East Yard and the other at the Alcock Yard, both of which will be used for the accelerated delivery of the six Scorpene SSKs on order. As things now stand, the first Scorpene will be launched by August 2015, with the sixth being launched by September 2018.
P-15 A
And each Project 15A DDG’s acquisition cost is almost US$950 million (Rs.38 billion), while that of each Project 17 FFG is US$650 million (Rs.26 billion). The cost escalation in these two shipbuilding projects has been about 225% for Project 15A, about 260% for Project 17, with the main reasons contributing towards cost escalations being: delay in supply of warship-building D-40S steel by Russia, escalation due to increases in expenditure of the services rendered by Russian specialists on account of inflation during the build-period, impact of wage revisions due from October 2003, and finalisation of cost of weapons and sensors.
INS Kolkata, whose keel was laid down on September 23, 2003, was launched on March 30, 2006. Therefore, detailed design of this class of DDG (using TRIBON CAD software) by a joint team comprising the IN’s in-house Directorate of Naval Design (DND)—which celebrates its 50 years of existence this year—and the MoD-owned shipbuilder Mazagon Docks Ltd (MDL), should have been concluded by mid-2002. But this was not to be, since the weapon-and-sensor fitments were yet to be selected at that time. It was only on January 27, 2006 that India’s MoD-owned Defence R & D Organisation (DRDO) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) inked the Barak-2 LR-SAM’s joint five-year joint R & D contract—valued at US$556 million—following 17 months of exhaustive negotiations. And the follow-on US$1.1 billion procurement contract for Barak-2 LR-SAMs and the three EL/M-2248 S-band multi-function search-and-target acquisition radars (MF-STAR)—the first naval active phased-array radars to become operational with a navy of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR)—was inked in April 2009. As a result, it can be safely inferred that the DND had finalised only about 70% of the DDG’s design by 2003.
