India’s First Indigenous Aircraft Carrier INS Vikrant Begins Sea Trials

The much-awaited sea trials of India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC), which will be reincarnated as INS Vikrant once it is commissioned in August next year, finally kicked off on Wednesday. Describing the launch of the maiden sea trials of the 40,000-tonne IAC as a “proud and historic day”, the Navy said India has now joined a select group of countries to have the “niche capability” to indigenously design, build and integrate a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier.

Built at the Cochin Shipyard for around Rs 23,000 crore, the IAC will become fully operational only after the flight trials of MiG-29K supersonic fighter jets, MH-60R multi-role helicopters and the indigenously manufactured ALHs (advanced light helicopters) are completed from its deck by around mid-2023. Once deployed, the IAC will pack quite an offensive punch and project raw military power on the high seas. It will be christened INS Vikrant after the country’s first aircraft carrier, which was acquired from the UK in 1961 and eventually decommissioned in 1997. In its long and glorious operational service, the original INS Vikrant also played a major role during the 1971 war.

The basin trials of the IAC, which was first sanctioned by the government way back in January 2003, were completed last year to prove the main propulsion plant of the ship in harbour as a precursor to the sea trials. India currently has only one aircraft carrier, the 44,500-tonne INS Vikramaditya, inducted from Russia for $2.33 billion in November 2013. Another $2 billion was spent on procuring 45 MiG-29Ks to operate from its deck.

As reported by TOI earlier, the Navy now wants 36 new multi-role fighters to meet the shortfall in the number of jets required for both INS Vikramaditya and IAC. The case for a third 65,000-tonne carrier (IAC-II), which is pending since May 2015, is also yet to get even the initial “acceptance of necessity” by the government. China, meanwhile, is assiduously ramping up its naval presence in the Indian Ocean Region. Fast-tracking its aircraft carrier plans, China already has two carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, and is building two more towards its aim of eventually having 10 of them.

The US Navy, of course, has as many as 11 “super” 100,00-tonne carriers, each of which can carry 80-90 fighters. A `carrier strike group’ of an aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships is a self-contained and composite war-fighting machine, with inherent flexibility and mobility to shift to a new theatre of operations in 48 to 72 hours.