The ship, christened INS Shivalik after one of India's Himalayan peaks, has been built at the state-run Mazgoan Dock Ltd. (MDL) near Bombay and is designed to evade interception as part of its stealth capabilities, they said.

Warship Shivalik, part of a national naval project to build three stealth ships, will be assigned operational duties when fully armed by December 2005, the officials said.

The remaining two will be commissioned with the Indian navy in 2006 and in

"Shivalik will play the dual role of offensive and defensive combat and it also has the capacity to attack in-shore targets," a defence ministry official said.

MDL chief H. S. Kang said Shivalik's original cost when the project left the drawing board in 1994 was estimated at two billion rupees (42 million dollars) and warned the cost would jump 10 times by the time it is deployed in two years time.

Defence Minister George Fernandes was among the officials present at the ship's formal launch into the Arabian Sea by naval chief Admiral Madhavendra Singh's wife Kaumudi Kumari, the MDL ship-builders said.

Further details of the ship were not available, but sources said it was likely to be fitted with the 300 kilometre (180 mile) anti-ship cruise missile BraHmos, being jointly built by India and Russia.

French military ship-builders are trying to sell or build stealth ships for the 137-ship Indian navy.

The Indian navy, which is also expecting the delivery of a Russia-made stealth warship later this year, plans to build an aircraft carrier to double its fleet of such maritime combat platforms to two.

SPACE.WIRE