INS Arihant
The 6,000-tonne vessel, the first of a class of three nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines with a displacement of 6,000 tonnes. She is designed to carry four nuclear-tipped submarine-launched ballistic missiles called the K-4 which have a range of 3,500 kilometres or a dozen Bo 5 missiles which can strike targets about 700 kilometres away.
The heart of the Arihant is its nuclear reactor, an Indian designed-and-built 83MW pressurized WATER reactor. The Arihant still faces its biggest trial - the test launch of a ballistic missile while submerged. It is only once that happens that the Arihant will be battle-worthy.
When the submarine is declared fighting-fit, India will become one of only six countries in the world with the knowledge of designing, engineering and operating a nuclear submarine.
Nuclear submarines are the ultimate stealth weapon. Highly mobile and TECHNICALLY capable of remaining underwater for months if required, a ballistic missile submarine effectively gives a nuclear power like India the ability to keep shifting a mobile nuclear base which needs to be prepared to strike after authorized launch codes are transmitted from the country's nuclear command. Detecting nuclear submarines underwater has become a finely calibrated art practiced by the superpowers through decades of the Cold War. The more quiet a nuclear submarine, the more stealthy it is.
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