Imphal, Brahmos-armed warship to be commissioned in December (GS Paper 3, Defence)
Why in news?
- Four years after its launch in Mumbai, the Indian Navy is set to commission the guided missile destroyer, Imphal, in December.
- The ship, designed by the Navy’s Warship Design Bureau (WDB), was delivered by Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL) in October, 2023.
Details:
- The Imphal is the first capital (among the Navy’s most important) warship to be named after a city in the North-East, the capital of Manipur.
- It is the third ship of the Navy’s Project 15B or the Visakhapatnam-class ships and the first warship in India with separate accommodation for women officers and sailors.
Key features of Imphal:
- Imphal, which is being touted as one of the largest destroyers built in India, is 164-metres long and has a displacement (weight) of 7500 tonnes.
- The Imphal can carry a crew of 312 and has an endurance (period or distance that it can operate without requiring restoring) of 4000 nautical miles.
- The ship can carry onboard two helicopters, and uses a powerful combined gas and gas (COGAG) propulsion plant, consisting of four reversible gas turbines, which enables Imphal to achieve a speed of over 30 knots (approximately 55 kilometres per hour).
- The vessel is armed with supersonic surface-to-surface ‘Brahmos’ missiles and ‘Barak-8’ Medium Range Surface to Air Missiles (MRSAM).
- When it comes to undersea warfare capabilities, the destroyer is fitted with indigenously developed anti-submarine weapons and sensors, such as the hull-mounted sonar (sound navigation and ranging tool) Humsa NG, heavy-weight torpedo tube launchers and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) rocket launchers.
- It is the first among all Visakhapatnam-class destroyers to be fitted with an upgraded Brahmos missile, having dual role capability of long-range and land attack.
Background:
- In 2011, the Indian government had reportedly sanctioned four 15B ships at the cost of Rs 29,700 crores.
- The first ship in this series, INS Visakhapatnam, was commissioned on 21 November 2021, while the second ship, INS Mormugao, was commissioned on 18 December 2022.
- The fourth ship, Surat, was launched in May 2022 and is said to be at an advanced stage of outfitting.
Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker Prize for Prophet Song
(Miscellaneous)
Why in news?
- Irish author Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker Prize for fiction recently for his novel ‘Prophet Song’, a dystopian work about an Ireland that descends into tyranny.
Details:
- He won the prize beating London-based Indian-origin author Chetna Maroo's debut novel "Western Lane".
- He becomes the fifth Irish writer to win the high-profile literary prize.
- The previous Irish winners are Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.
Novel ‘Prophet Song’:
- Lynch’s book is set in Dublin in a near future version of Ireland. It follows the struggles of a mother of four as she tries to save her family from totalitarianism.
- There are no paragraph breaks in the novel, which is Lynch’s fifth.
About Booker Prize:
- The Booker is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the U.K. or Ireland between October 1, 2022, and September 30, 2023.
- Booker Prize is a literary prize that is conferred each year to recognize the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
- Initially, this prize recognized only those novels written by authors from Commonwealth countries, Ireland and South Africa.
- In 2014, it was expanded to include any English-language novel.
