The Delhi-class destroyers, also known as Project 15, are a class of guided-missile destroyers of the Indian Navy. Three ships of this class are in active service. The Delhi-class vessels were the largest vessels to be built in India at the time of their commissioning. The ships were built by Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL) at a cost of ₹750 crore each.

The design and development of the ship class began as "Project 15" in 1980. Initially, the ships were planned to be follow-on frigates of the Godavari class with the addition of RBU-6000 ASW rocket launchers and gas turbine propulsion. A Soviet offer in 1983 for reversible gas turbines and modern weapon systems forced a redesign of the ships from 3,500-tonne frigates to 6,300-tonne destroyers.

The Directorate of Naval Design completed the design around the mid 1980s. Model tests were carried out at SSPA, Sweden in 1985 and parallelly at Krylov Institute, Soviet Union in 1986. Severnoye Design Bureau provided design inputs for weapons and propulsion packages.

General Characteristics