Project 28A: India Orders Eight Next Generation Corvettes

India’s Ministry of Defence has signed contracts worth ₹53,866.5 crore, approximately $5.7 billion, with the state-owned shipbuilders Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers and Goa Shipyard Limited for eight Next Generation Corvettes under Project 28A. The contracts were signed in New Delhi on November 2, only days after the Cabinet Committee on Security cleared the project. Garden Reach will build five of the warships for around ₹32,000 crore, and Goa Shipyard the remaining three. The ministry called it the first program in which Indian Navy designed warships are built by state shipyards chosen through competitive bidding rather than nomination, and a “significant milestone in India’s indigenous warship design and construction capabilities.” The final value is considerably above the roughly ₹36,000 crore estimated at the program’s first approval in June 2022, a rise of almost 50 percent in four years.

The program traces back to a 2016 request for information for seven corvettes, with the Defence Acquisition Council raising the number to eight in 2022 and Garden Reach emerging as the lowest bidder in May 2025. The ships will gradually replace the Indian Navy‘s ageing single-role corvettes, and at around 4,950 tonnes they will be heavier than the Russian-designed Talwar class frigates. They follow Garden Reach’s four Kamorta class anti-submarine corvettes built under Project 28, which entered service between 2014 and 2020. Both yards are expected to launch their first hulls in late 2029, with deliveries to begin by 2031.

Garden Reach has stated that the corvettes will measure 127.4 metres long, reach 26 knots, and carry Medium Range Anti-Ship Missiles, Medium Range Surface-to-Air Missiles and 324 millimetre torpedo tubes. The gun armament comprises an OTO Melara 76 millimetre Super Rapid Gun Mount and AK-630 close-in weapon systems, while a Multi-Function Surveillance, Track and Guidance Radar directs the air defence battle. Released renderings reportedly show 16 surface-to-air missiles in two eight-cell vertical launch units, alongside a hangar for a helicopter or unmanned aircraft and a crew of 150. Combining anti-submarine, anti-surface, escort and air defence roles in one hull is a significant departure from the specialised ships they succeed. That matters particularly as China’s fast-growing navy fields new classes such as its drone-carrying assault ships, while roughly 90 percent of India’s trade moves by sea.

The Indian Navy operates 145 ships and submarines, and Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Tripathi stated in February that it aims to field more than 200 by 2035. The corvette order follows the first landing of a Rafale Marine fighter on the carrier INS Vikrant on October 29, part of a roughly $7.5 billion purchase of 26 aircraft from France. A separate deal for six air-independent propulsion submarines, to be built by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems for around $8 billion, has yet to be signed. Germany’s ambassador to India, Jasper Wieck, stated in September that Berlin had finalised its documents and that it was “now up to the Indian side” to complete its internal processes.