First Fleet Support Ship Surya Launched at HSL Visakhapatnam

The correct answer is Surya. FSS-1, the first of the Fleet Support Ships designed and built by Hindustan Shipyard Limited, was named Surya and launched by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at the Visakhapatnam yard on 6 October 2026. Traditional launch honours were performed by Laila Swaminathan, President of the Navy Wives Wellness Association, and the vessel entered the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Option A is wrong, though it is a tempting distractor: Jala Usha was the first ship built in independent India and was launched at Visakhapatnam in 1948, a point the minister recalled in his speech, but it is not the new support ship. Options C and D are wrong because no vessel of those names features in this launch; they are plausible-sounding naval names offered as traps. Candidates should tie the name Surya to FSS-1 and keep Jala Usha separately in memory as the 1948 milestone.

The correct answer is up to 45,000 DWT. Slipway-4 at Hindustan Shipyard Limited was extended and strengthened so that the yard could take on larger hulls, and the Defence Minister inaugurated the upgraded slipway on the same day he launched Surya and laid the keel of FSS-5. Alongside it he opened a 300-tonne Goliath Crane spanning Slipways 3 and 4, designed and manufactured by L and T Geostructure with Konecranes under Make in India, fitted with programmable controls, variable frequency drives, tandem lifting, remote diagnostics and condition monitoring. Options A and B are wrong because they understate the new limit, and a yard restricted to those sizes could not undertake the larger and more complex programmes the upgrade is meant to enable. Option D is wrong because it overstates the capacity. Pair the slipway figure with the crane figure, since both are standard one-mark facts from this event.

The correct answer is Visakhapatnam. Hindustan Shipyard Limited stands in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and it was there that Surya was launched into the Bay of Bengal, the keel of FSS-5 was laid and the upgraded Slipway-4 and the 300-tonne Goliath Crane were inaugurated. The Defence Minister argued that the city, which already hosts the Eastern Naval Command, the Naval Dockyard, the shipyard and a major port, should be developed into a large maritime industrial hub, and he recalled that independent India’s first ship, Jala Usha, was launched there in 1948. Option A is wrong because Kochi hosts a different public shipyard. Option B is wrong because Mumbai’s naval shipbuilding is carried out by another yard altogether. Option D is wrong because Kolkata’s defence shipbuilding is handled by a separate company. Candidates should also note that HSL came under the Ministry of Defence and earned Miniratna Category-I status in 2025.