Editorial: Pride of Indian Navy

It’s truly a defining moment in the history of the Indian Navy. The commissioning of the country’s first indigenously designed and manufactured aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, will catapult India to a select club of the world’s great naval powers and strengthen the country’s standing as a ‘Blue Water Navy’ — a maritime force with global reach and capability to operate over deep seas. Built at a cost of Rs 23,000 crore, the 40,000-tonne warship is a reincarnation of the earlier version of INS Vikrant which had played a significant role in the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. The Indian Navy has been focusing on significantly bolstering its overall capabilities in view of China’s growing efforts to increase its military presence in the Indian Ocean Region. The Indian Ocean, considered the backyard of the Indian Navy, is critical to the country’s strategic interests. The project has also demonstrated the strength of the public-private partnership as nearly 550 firms, including about 100 small and medium enterprises, were involved in it, providing various services overcoming the pandemic-induced difficulties. Compared with the new INS Vikrant, the old one had less than half its displacement and was over 210 metres in length against the 260 metres of the present one. The 18-floor high ship has close to 2,400 compartments, designed to house a 1,600-strong crew. The aviation hangar is as big as two Olympic-size pools that can accommodate around 30 aircraft. The plan for building an indigenous aircraft carrier started taking shape as the old INS Vikrant neared its decommissioning in the late 1990s.

With this feat, India now joins the elite club of six nations — the US, UK, Spain, Russia, France, and China — that have the capability to design and build an indigenous aircraft carrier. Vikrant becomes the second aircraft carrier after the Russian-built INS Vikramaditya, which was commissioned in 2013. The next challenge is to expedite the completion of works on India’s second indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vishal. Given the rapidly changing security scenario, India needs to carry out military modernisation at a much faster pace. The Navy has been seeking approval from the government since 2015 to build a second indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-2). This proposed carrier, INS Vishal, is intended to be a giant 65,000-tonne vessel, much bigger than IAC-1 and the INS Vikramaditya. Now that India has developed the capability to build such vessels, it should not be whittled away. Even if the government gives the IAC-2 project the go-ahead now, it will be over 10 years before the warship is commissioned. An aircraft carrier is one of the most potent marine assets for a nation, which enhances the Navy’s capability to carry out air domination operations. While the United States Navy has 11 aircraft carriers, China has two and a third one is in the making and another two are likely to be commissioned within a decade.