The keel of India's first indigenous aircraft carrier, to be the second warship christened INS Vikrant, will be laid on February 28 at Kochi. But it is now clear that while Cochin Shipyards will build three aircraft carriers in the current 37,500-ton category (the second and third are to be christened INS Viraat and INS Vishaal apparently), design work has already begun in earnest to develop and build two more aircraft carriers with not only much larger displacements, but possibly nuclear propulsion as well.
Read more
I'd say it will take 10 years till the first carrier (Vikrant) is built and operating. 13 years for the second one.
ReplyDeleteAs to larger carriers - India will need to operate and fine tune its two new smaller carriers for five years before it can prudently start building large carriers.
I suggest any large carrier building will start after 2020 - otherwise India will blunder into yet another mistake - like renovating the old Russian large carrier Gorshkov.
As Russia has never operated a carrier in wartime - it eludes me why India and China are relying on Russian carriers as model designs.
Pete
Hey Pete,
ReplyDeleteI was just wondering from where you got the time lines of building them and operating them.Could you point me towards a source
Any way the aircraft's the aircraft carrier will be carrying will hope fully be Tejas