Image credit: Larsen & Toubro — official company photo.
On 16 October 2026, Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan commissioned INS Samarthak into the Indian Navy at Naval Base Karwar, in the presence of Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Krishna Swaminathan. The Ministry of Defence described the moment as a first: Samarthak is the first major warship designed, engineered and built entirely in-house by an Indian private shipyard — Larsen & Toubro’s Warship Design Centre and Kattupalli Shipyard near Chennai. The vessel carries more than 75 per cent indigenous content, a figure the MoD itself has verified under its assessment framework.
INS Samarthak (A 10) alongside at L&T’s Kattupalli Shipyard. Image: Larsen & Toubro.
Not a frontline warship — a trials mothership
Samarthak is the Indian Navy’s first Multi-Purpose Vessel (MPV), a class conceived less for combat than for enabling it. Its headline role is as a dedicated test-and-trials platform: a ship where indigenous weapons, sensors and emerging technologies can be evaluated in real maritime conditions before they are considered fit for wider service. A dedicated trials vessel means frontline destroyers and frigates no longer have to be pulled off operational duty to babysit prototype equipment — a quiet but significant piece of defence-engineering infrastructure.
The MoD lists the rest of the brief as deliberately broad: a mothership for unmanned and autonomous systems (surface, aerial and underwater), target deployment and recovery for gunnery and anti-submarine exercises, maritime surveillance and offshore patrolling, low-intensity maritime operations, mine-countermeasure support, towing and salvage, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and even conversion into a limited hospital ship. A state-of-the-art dynamic positioning system holds the ship precisely on station while targets are launched and recovered at sea.
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Built the modern way: modular, pre-outfitted
The Ministry of Defence highlighted two construction methods behind the ship: extensive modular construction and pre-outfitting — building and equipping sections of the vessel before final assembly, which streamlines the process and lets work proceed while spaces are still easy to access. The MoD says these methods helped optimise the construction process and timelines.
The paper trail is short for a warship programme. The Defence Ministry signed the contract with L&T Shipyard on 25 March 2022 for two multi-purpose vessels at a cost of Rs 887 crore. Keels were laid in March 2023, Samarthak was launched in October 2024 and delivered to the Navy on 27 August 2026. Her sister ship, INS Utkarsh, has already been launched and is in sea trials. Two more vessels in the class have been cleared for ordering. L&T says its Kattupalli yard — among India’s most advanced integrated shipbuilding facilities, in the company’s telling — is also building three Cadet Training Ships for the Navy.
The numbers on record: roughly 106 metres long with a 16.8-metre beam, a maximum design speed of 15 knots, and an integrated combat suite that the MoD says combines indigenous sensors, weapons and electronic systems optimised for challenging maritime conditions. The ship’s crest — an Indian elephant emerging from the waves, symbolising strength, intelligence and agility — sits under the motto “ăijay&rtha;m ekanìshthatā”: Victory is Our Sole Aim. The name Samarthak itself means “the proponent” or “supporter”, a nod to the vessel’s role as an enabler of everything around it.
What to watch
The commissioning is a proof point for private-sector warship building, not a finish line. Admiral Swaminathan used the ceremony to argue that lessons from the project must be used to shorten approval periods and cut delivery times for future vessels. What matters now is whether the pipeline holds: INS Utkarsh’s trials, the two additional vessels cleared for ordering, and whether L&T’s Warship Design Centre can convert this first-of-class into a repeatable shipbuilding programme. For India’s unmanned maritime ambitions in particular — the drones, USVs and UUVs that Samarthak is meant to mother — the ship finally gives the Navy a dedicated deck from which to prove them.
