INS Kattabomman

INS Kattabomman is the designation of the VLF-transmission facility of the Indian Navy situated at Vijayanarayanam near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. The facility spread over 3,000 acres has 13 masts, which are arranged in two rings around the central mast. The centre mast has a height of 301 metres, the masts on the inner ring measure 276.4 metres, that on the outer ring measure 227.4 metres.

Two further masts of the station carrying an umbrella antenna, the INS Kattabomman is 471 metres tall and the tallest structure in India. They are also the tallest military structure in the world. The facility opened an ELF transmission facility in 2014.

History


Development and construction of INS Kattabomman started in 1984 as Project Skylark and costed inr 1220000000. It was commissioned into service by Indian President Ramaswamy Venkataraman on 20 October 1990. It is named after king Veera Pandya Kattabomman, who died during the Indian independence movement.

After operationalising the base, India became the seventh country in the world to have developed the Very low frequency communication capability.

VLF upgrades
On 31 July 2014, a new Very low frequency facility was inaugurated at INS Kattabomman. The upgrade included digitising the control interface.

Extremely low frequency facility
An Extremely low frequency communication facility is also present near the VLF facility, construction of which commenced in March 2012. The facility is used by the Nuclear Command Authority to communicate with the Arihant-class of submarines.

India is the second country after Russia to actively operate an Extremely low frequency facility; the United States had discontinued using it in 2004. Another such facility is proposed in Damagundam Reserve Forest (approximately at 17°16'N 77°56'E ).