Aircraft carrier INS Vikrant to be launched on Aug 12

President approves warship's name according to Navy tradition

The largest warship ever made in India, aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, is set to be released in the water on August 12, catapulting India to a select league of four countries which manufacture and operate a 40,000-tonne carrier.

Only four nations – the US, UK, France and Russia – manufacture and operate their own aircraft carrier. India will be the fifth such country.

Being manufactured at Cochin shipyard, the new carrier is expected to be delivered to the Navy by the end of 2018, four years behind schedule. The delay happened mainly due to difficulties in bringing two heavy-duty gear boxes in the dockyard.

President and supreme commander of the armed forces, Pranab Mukherjee, on Thursday approved naming the new carrier INS Vikrant following an old Naval tradition in which “warships never die.”

The new ship will have the same crest as the first INS Vikrant, which was commissioned in 1961.

After four decades of service, including a stellar role in the 1971 war, the old Vikrant was decommissioned in 1997 and converted into a museum.

Since last month, the ageing warhorse in the Mumbai dockyard is being scrapped, piece by piece, sources told Deccan Herald.

The new INS Vikrant will play a critical role in projecting India’s maritime prowess at a time when China plans to expand its footprint in the Indian Ocean. Along with the Russian-origin INS Vikramaditya, it will form the core of two carrier battle groups guarding the two coasts.

India, in fact, will not have to wait till 2018 to operate two carrier battle groups, a mini self-sustaining flotilla.

Within a few months, it will be the first Asian nation to simultaneously operate two aircraft carriers as INS Vikramaditya is scheduled to be delivered by December and INS Viraat went through a refit, extending its life by another two years.

“Two carrier battle groups, each centering around an aircraft carrier, will give us operational flexibility to meet our maritime task. But we plan to have three aircraft carriers in future,” vice-chief of the Navy, Vice-Admiral R K Dhowan, said here.

The new warship will be launched by Elizabeth Antony following yet another Naval tradition in which a lady always releases a new ship into the water.

INS Vikrant will have about 25 aircraft including a squadron of MiG-29 K fighters and Kamov 31 helicopters.

Dhowan said design of the second indigenous aircraft carrier was not frozen yet and no decision has been taken on whether it's propulsion system would be nuclear-powered.