IRS-class tugboat

The IRS class of tugboats are a series of Bollard pull tugboats built by Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Visakhapatnam, for the Indian Navy.

INS Sahas and INS Dhiraj tugs were flagged off by Commander (retd) K.S. Subramanian, the Director (shipbuilding) and INS Himmat was flagged off by Rear Admiral (Retd) N K Mishra, NM Chairman & Managing Director of HSL. The vessels were built under special survey of IRS Steel ship rules and as such were assigned with IRS class notation. Contracts for 4 additional similar tugboats were signed between HSL and Indian Navy in November 2019. The keel of the first two tugboats Veeran and Balaram were laid on November 15, 2019. The new tugboats are to be stationed at Visakhapatnam, the future home base of INS Vikrant (2013) to handle the aircraft carrier once it is commissioned into Indian Navy in 2022.

Specifications
Each of these tugboats can achieve 13.5 kn against a design speed of 12 kn at 85% maximum continuous rating. Bollard pull of all the vessels is in excess of 54 tonnes almost 10% in excess of specifications.

Service history
INS Himmat, INS Sahas and INS Dhiraj serve with the Western Naval Command at Karwar. These vessels are primarily meant to handle the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya which is based in Karwar since early 2014.