Picture for representation purpose
Aircraft carrier, from the name itself, can be guessed as a ship that operates aircraft from it. An aircraft carrier is an indispensable part of a strong navy. But, only a few country namely U.S.A., Russia, India, China, Italy, Thailand, Spain, U.K., and France are operating aircraft carriers whereas, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands had once operated Aircraft Carriers.
Aircraft carriers are of two types, namely conventional Diesel-Electric and Nuclear Powered. Diesel Electric type of aircraft carriers are the most famous type as only U.S.A. and France operates a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
Read about Unmanned Surface Vessel ( USV )
Now, a question arises that why only a few country operates aircraft carrier?? The main reason behind this is funding issue. An aircraft carrier itself is costly enough but, merely buying it will never make a sense. To make it fully functional, a healthy number of aircrafts should also be operated from it! Now, calculating the total cost we will see that if, suppose an aircraft carrier costs 23,000 Crore Rupees and it operates at least 2 squadrons of Naval Aircraft which costs nearly 10,500 Crore Rupees (approx.), then the total amount required to initially operate the carrier will be nearly 40,000 Crore. Only a few nation has such a good economy to be able to operate an aircraft carrier in their navy.
Does India need to buy INS Vishal?
India has an operational aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya which is of conventional diesel-electric type. It is a modified Kiev-Class aircraft carrier which came into service in the year of 2013. It was earlier known as Admiral Gorshkov, which was in service in Russian Navy from 1987-1996. After the decommissioning from Russian fleet, it was bought by India for $2.35 billion.
INS Vikrant (IAC-1) is India’s first indigenously made, conventional diesel-electric type aircraft carrier which is under its sea trials and will come into service next year, i.e. 2022. Now, before answering the question that should India buy INS Vishal or not, we must know a fact that it takes approximately 7-15 years to make an aircraft carrier.
Acknowledging India’s naval border, India needs two aircraft carriers operational at the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, at a given point of time. It becomes a pressure over INS Vikramaditya to control alone. So, INS Vikrant after being inducted will work with INS Vikramaditya to secure India’s naval border. As, both of them are of Conventional Diesel-Electric type, they need to come back to their base for refuelling and overhauling. Due to which one of them has to take more pressure while the other will go for maintenance.
To prevent these short-comings a third aircraft carrier is a must for the navy. Also, to prevent the aggression of Chinese navy and fulfil the aspiration of India to build a strong navy and dominate the Indian Ocean, INS Vishal is required.
What type of aircraft carrier should INS Vishal be?
Conventional type of aircraft carrier is more famous than Nuclear-powered type but, still Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers has their own benefits in themselves. Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are the future and to ensure ease in making such carriers in future, we must start working on it from now.
India has a good potential to make a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Like the way India built their own Nuclear-powered attack submarines, they can easily make an aircraft carrier. Though the current requirements doesn’t force the navy to have a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier but, to reduce the pressure in future, INS Vishal must be of nuclear-powered type.
Author : Soumyadip Sarkar
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