President Droupadi Murmu launched India’s newest warship ‘INS Vindhyagiri’ on Thursday at the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd’s (GRSE) facility on the banks of Hooghly River at Kidderpore in Kolkata. Named after the mountain range in Karnataka, the advanced stealth frigate INS Vindhyagiri is the sixth ship of the Project 17A Frigates. The state-of-the-art ship will be fitted with the latest gadgets and undergo extensive trials before being handed over to the Indian Navy for commissioning into service.
 
P17A ships are guided missile frigates. These warships are follow-ons of the Shivalik class Project 17 frigates with improved stealth features, advanced weapons and sensors and platform management systems and are capable of neutralising threats in all three dimensions of air, surface and subsurface. Vindhyagiri is the last of the three ships being built by Defence PSU GRSE for the Indian Navy. The first five ships of the project were launched between 2019 and 2022.