Two Prime Ministers - Japan's Abe and India's Modi. Are their countries close enough for a Soryu deal?
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The Indian press reported on January 29, 2015 that India, under submarine purchasing-building Project-75-I (I for India), may wish to select six Japanese Soryu submarines for building in India. The Rs 50,000 crore project price converts to $US8,133,990,000 that is $US8.13 Billion (where one crore is 10,000,000 Indian Rupees and one Rupee is worth 0.016 US Dollars).
This would be in competition with Germany (TKMS-HDW), Russia (Rosoboronexport), Spain (Navantia), Sweden (Saab) and France (DCNS).
COMMENT
Several problems already seem evident in the possibility of Japan selling Soryus to India:
India's "build in India" intention may clash with Japan's (to date) insistence that any Soryus it markets should be built in Japan.
Japan would be mindful of India's closeness to Japan's strategic opponent Russia. Japan is very sensitive to the security of its submarine technology secrets. Therefore Japan would not want the secrets of any Soryu sold to India, or even more so built in India, to be passed on to one of Japan's opponents. India has been close to Russia on a defence sales, weapons development and on secondment of personnel, levels for decades. India and Russia are particularly close on submarine high technology.
India may have a poor submarine buying reputation with Western firms. Note that France (DCNS) is already building 6 Scorpenes for India under a separate, problem plagued project that is confusingly called "Project 75". India has expressed displeasure with alleged French caused delays although these delays appear to lie with the notoriously slow Indian political-bureaucratic establishment. See third paragraph of this Indian article. India is also frustrated that those 6 Scorpenes do not come with air independent propulsion (AIP). India sees AIP as important - in part to match the AIP equipped DCNS Agosta submarines operated by Pakistan.
If India insists on AIP this may cause problems for Japan, which in its first 5 Soryus has included Stirling engine AIP from Sweden. It is unlikely that Japan would receive Swedish permission to sell Soryus with Stirling AIP to India. Sweden, after all, would prefer to sell its own Saab-Kockums submarines, with Stirling technology, to India.
If there is a prospect of "build Soryus in India" - even whether or not it happens - this would have implications for any Japanese Soryu sale to Australia. Perhaps "build Soryus in part or whole in Australia" might be more possible?
If India is serious about buying 6 very large conventional submarines - built in India - with AIP - then Germany's HDW 216 and France's SMX Ocean may both be stronger contenders than Japan's (build in Japan - maybe no AIP) Soryu. This may increase the production runs and drive down costs for the 216 and/or SMX making them more attractive to Australia. Canada has also been grouped with India and Australia as a country with a relatively large budget, in need of large, long range, replacement submarines.
Pete