India's MIRV Range/Tracking Ships: INS Dhruv & INS Anvesh

India’s long range missile programs require a great deal of seaborne infrastructure for telemetry, safety, surveillance and other uses.

Gessler on September 12, 2021 kindly provided the following comments (with links and photos). [Note: Alas, the high quality photos/artworks could be no larger than "Large" to fit into the file size capacity of Blogger/Blogspot]   

INS DHRUV

Speaking of SLBMs, India seems to have taken another step toward facilitating the effective terminal re-entry testing of MIRVed missiles (both land & submarine-launched) with the official commissioning of the INS Dhruv ocean surveillance/missile range instrumentation ship on September 10, 2021. See this Hindustan Times, September 10, 2021 article. 

Images of INS Dhruv are below:

https://ibb.co/t8KT2Gp
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https://ibb.co/crjSmqJ  
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Dhruv from above https://ibb.co/pWsWY8K

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The Hindustan Times article erroneously calls the 175m long, 15,000 ton, INS Dhruv a vessel of only "10,000" tons. But 10,000 tons is just the weight of the steel hull ** ). INS Dhruv is slightly larger than the US Navy's USNS Howard O. Lorenzen which performs a similar role.

INS Dhruv, with at least 2 large locally-developed Active Phased Array radars, will play a crucial role in tracking MIRV splashdowns in the central/southern Indian Ocean region, thousands of kms away from the Indian mainland.

It's interesting to note that the only other countries that operate such range/tracking ships are those that have already developed a solid MIRV capability - US, Russia, France & China.

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INS ANVESH

In addition, another ship, namely the 118-meter long, 11,300-ton displacement INS Anvesh is also out at sea (though sea trials haven't officially started yet). This ship seems geared toward testing of the next-gen of Anti-Ballistic/Anti-Satellite Missiles and/or Surface-to-Air Missiles in combination with the locally-developed Long Range Multifunction Radar (LR-MFR) active phased array radar, plus its Combat Management System.

GODOFPARADOXES' annotated analysis is below:

A Jane's analysis photo during INS Anvesh's fitting-out process last year https://ibb.co/6JG2rt6
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Anvesh from above https://ibb.co/kBvmWF8
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INS Dhruv and INS Anvesh together might comprise what might be called the DRDO's "Open Sea Test Range", which could reliably test the effectiveness of BMD interceptions by constantly monitoring both the target & interceptor objects over realistic ranges & velocities, as pictured by GODOFPARADOXES here:

https://twitter.com/GODOFPARADOXES/status/1435289367682105349
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** This 10,000 steel hull tonnage for INS Dhruv is as stated in the website of New Delhi-based private sector ship design firm Vik Sandvik. On that website INS Dhruv is called "Naval Vessel". Vik Sandvik designed the hulls of both INS Anvesh (called "Special Vessel") & INS Dhruv.