I still feel it's gonna be a logistical nightmare to move away from the French Scorpenes and now induct a German platform even though we're operating some older models. Not to mention, the Germans are notorious for randomly banning export citing weird reasons
Not really a logistical nightmare. The capital machinery is pretty much all the same in end with some updates maybe (that will need to happen anyway).... there may be some new addendums of worker training and new manufacturing IP, but largely its always get what you pay for in this realm anyway for new blocks of production.
In any case, I hope the last 3 scorpene (improved) does go through to keep MDL occupied while this next 6 materialises to a final stage.
Germans should indeed be avoided when it comes to land defence systems as far as possible given sanctions/hesitancy/delays shenanigans they pull here (since these are always in some state of operation that upsets their powers that be etc).
Navy is much more different realm to those (i.e India is not in some hot conflict needing schrodinger box opened w.r.t German feelings on it in first place.....i.e the tiers for naval conflict are much higher to get started compared to "low/middle key" land warfare/COIN in Kashmir, N.E, naxalite interior etc...and like say Turks also have w.r.t South Eastern parts of their country and Syrian border regions etc).
So things will progress fine in Naval realm, also given how the ToT in such projects is constructed in deal with guarantees and good fine print to begin with etc that tie into much more severe repercussions (compared to land) politically if violated later.
If I'm not wrong, the French were planning to offer an advanced Scorpene class kinda like a hybrid between the Scorpene and Barracuda...I wonder what happened to that!
Probably the projected cost (and timelines, given Indian shipyard capacity is already running on slim margins here)... i.e similar to reason it lost in Australian submarine one (you can read my replies in that thread)....and aussies just went full monty for direct SSN with AUKUS sub project anyway.
i.e makes little sense to pay for SSN and get SSK in end. Things are baked in material design and cost wise if a sub design starts as SSN (affecting how much you can pare down to make it an SSK), compared to doing a SSK (even say a larger SSK) from ground up.