How does INS Vikrant compare with aircraft carriers from China and the US?

It’s a historic moment for India as the first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier, INS Vikrant, was commissioned today by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The commissioning of INS Vikrant_,_ the first indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier is a significant step towards strengthening India’s self-reliance especially in the strategic sector of defence. The aircraft carrier is named after her illustrious predecessor, India’s first, which had played a vital role in the 1971 war. It has a large number of indigenous equipment and machinery, involving major industrial houses in the country as well as over 100 MSMEs. With the commissioning of Vikrant, India will have two operational aircraft carriers, which will bolster the maritime security of the nation. But how does it compare to other carriers from the US and China? Let’s take a closer look: INS Vikrant Designed by the Indian Navy’s in-house Warship Design Bureau (WDB) and built by the Cochin Shipyard, a public sector shipyard, INS Vikrant has been built with state-of- the-art automation features and is the largest ship ever built in the maritime history of India.

INS Vikrant is 262 metres long and 62 metres wide.

It has a displacement of 43,000 tonnes and can hit a maximum speed of 28 knots. It has an operation range of 7500 Nautical Miles. As per Eurasian Times, it has a beam of 62 meters and a height of 59 meters. It has 14 decks, five in the superstructure, and 2,300 compartments which can house a crew of 1,700, including special cabins for women officers. As per The Tribune, it has ship aircraft lifts (to take jets from hangar to deck) with a carrying capacity of 30 tonnes each, designed to operate without impeding the flight operations on deck. “Vikrant is a marvel, it’s five to seven times bigger in size than any warship India has made so far,” Madhu Nair, the chairman and Managing Director of CSL told The Tribune. Around 76 per cent of its Rs 20,000 crore budget was spent on equipment and manpower from India. This includes 23,000 tonnes of steel, 2,500 km of electric cables, 150 km of pipes, and 2,000 valves, and a wide range of finished products including rigid hull boats, galley equipment, air-conditioning and refrigeration plants, and steering gear. TATA, L&T, Wartsila and Kirloskar Pneumatics, along with public sector Bharat Electronics Limited, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Mishra Dhatu Nigam (MIDHANI) shaped the progress, as per the navy. The carrier is designed with a very high degree of automation for machinery operations, ship navigation and survivability. The carrier is equipped with the latest state of the art equipment and systems. It boasts a fully-fledged state of the art medical complex with the latest medical equipment facilities including major modular OT, emergency modular OT, physiotherapy clinic, ICU, laboratories, CT scanner, X-Ray machines, dental complex, isolation ward and telemedicine facilities. INS Vikrant, with its ski-jump ramp technology with two take-off runways and a landing strip with three arrester wires can operate Short Take-Off but Arrested Landing (STOBAR) craft.

It will initially operate 24 Russian-built MiG-29K fighter jets also deployed on the INS Vikramaditya.

However, the Indian Navy is in the process of acquiring a fleet of deck-based fighter jets (Boeing’s F/A-18E Super Hornet and Dassault Aviation’s Rafale-M (Marine) aircraft are on the shortlist), as per the report. It will also operate Kamov-31 helicopters, MH-60R multi-role helicopters, and other indigenously built advanced light helicopters, as per the report. As per The Tribune, some of its weapons and equipment have been imported. The long range surface-to-air missiles (LRSAM) are Israeli while Russia supplied the aviation complex and the MiG 29-K jets. The propulsion system’s integration has been done by Italian Fincantieri. The ship’s four engines, LM 2500 gas turbines, are from US company General Electric, but HAL played a role in the integration of engines. Integration of all weapon systems would be through an indigenous Combat Management System (CMS). With the _INS Vikrant’_s unveiling India will be catapulted into an exclusive club – nations (US, UK, Russia, France, and China) with the ability to design and build an aircraft carrier with a displacement of over 40,000 tonnes. As per The Wire, the navy’s Vice Chief of Staff Vice Admiral SN Ghormade said MiG-29K fighter landing trials on INS Vikrant would begin in November and be completed by mid-2023. Thus Vikrant will be fully operational by end of 2023, as per The Wire.

The Navy has said that once commissioned, IAC-1 will be “the most potent sea-based asset”.

The new warship will offer an “incomparable military instrument with its ability to project Air Power over long distances, including Air Interdiction, Anti-Surface Warfare, offensive and defensive Counter-Air, Airborne Anti-Submarine Warfare and Airborne Early Warning,” as per the navy. INS Vikramaditya                                                                             INS Vikramaditya is currently the Indian Navy’s only operation aircraft carrier. [caption id=“attachment_11148121” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] It is a refurbished Russian Kiev-class carrier, originally named Baku when in the Soviet Navy in the late 1980s. PTI[/caption] It is a refurbished Russian Kiev-class carrier, originally named Baku when in the Soviet Navy in the late 1980s. It was decommissioned in 1996, refurbished and entered the service of the Indian Navy on 16 November, 2013. It serves on the Western seas. The INS Vikramaditya is propelled by eight turbo-pressurized boilers and four geared steam turbines generating a total output power of 180,000shp.

It can hit a speed of up to 30 knots.

These boilers power four enormous propellers, each greater in diameter than twice the height of an average male. INS Vikramaditya has an overall length of about 284 meters and a maximum beam of about 60 meters, stretching as much as three football fields put together. Standing about 20 storeys tall from keel to the highest point, the ship has a total of 22 decks. Capable of hosting over 1,600 personnel, INS Vikramaditya has a capacity of over 8,000 tonnes of LSHSD and capable of operations up to a range of over 7,000 nautical miles or 13,000 kms. The 44,500-tonne vessel has specialized recovery equipment capable of carrying MiG 29K/Sea Harrier, Kamov 31, Kamov 28, Sea King, ALH-Dhruv and Chetak helicopters. The Indian Navy currently operates 45 MiG-29Ks, including variants and some two-seaters on it. Over the years, the carrier has taken part in multiple naval exercises, and tremendously added to IN’s blue-water capabilities. US’ USS Gerald R Ford As per Business Insider, the USS Gerald R. Ford was commissioned in 2017. The USS Gerald R. Ford spans 1,106 feet and has a displacement of a whopping 112,000 tons, making it the largest warship in the world. It has the capacity to hold over 4,500 crew.

Its research and development cost an eye watering $37.3 billion, and the construction of each unit cost almost $13 billion.

The USS Gerald R. Ford comes with a slew of surface-to-air missiles including the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow and the RIM-116, and M2 machine guns. It can carry more than 75 aircraft including the Lockheed Martin F-35 and Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets, and Sikorsky MH-60R helicopters. China’s Fujian China in June launched its third aircraft carrier Fujian at a brief ceremony in Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard. Much like INS Vikrant is for India, Fujian is China’s first domestically-designed and built catapult aircraft carrier. [caption id=“attachment_11148131” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] the Fujian has a displacement of more than 80,000 tonnes and is equipped with electromagnetic catapults and arresting devices. AP[/caption] Constructed by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited, the Fujian has a displacement of more than 80,000 tonnes – nearly double of Vikrant and 20,000 tonnes more than China’s other two aircraft carriers the Liaoning and Shandong. All three of China’s carriers use conventional engines rather than nuclear reactors, which limits the power they can generate and the time they can spend at sea, as per Business Insider. It is equipped with electromagnetic catapults and arresting devices. Fujian has a completely flat deck and three catapult in keeping with China’s attempts to adopt the catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) system used on US aircraft carriers, as per Business Insider. The Fujian has thus replaced the STOBAR system, and the ski-jump ramp it requires, used on both  Liaoning and Shandong, as per the report.

STOBAR lets jets launch on shorter decks but limits how much fuel and weaponry they can carry.

This is especially problematic for China, as the only fixed-wing carrier-based aircraft it has in service, the J-15, is already the heaviest carrier-based fighter in service. The J-15 aircraft which China currently operates for its aircraft carriers were regarded a major problem for the PLAN as each plane weighed about 18 tonnes, too heavy for carriers in the long run. The planes were considered to be a big drag. A Global Times report said Fujian would get an improved version of the J-15 heavy fighter compatible with a catapult launch, another electronic warfare version of the same jet, a stealth fighter called the J-35, and a fixed-wing EW aircraft called the KJ-600. A CATOBAR system can launch jets with bigger payloads and more fuel. It can also launch larger aircraft, like those suited for airborne early warning and control, as per Business Insider. The Fujian has an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) which functions on powerful magnetic fields generated by electromagnetic induction motors to propel lighter objects, uses fewer resources and recharges faster, as per Eurasian Times The Type 003 warship with a hull number of 18 is the first carrier in China’s fleet to use an electromagnetic catapult to launch planes from the deck, which is faster than the older steam catapult system. EMALS was regarded by Indian naval experts as a major leap forward by the Chinese navy as currently, only the US has such an advanced one. It is more energy-efficient and reduces maintenance.

It is also used on the US Navy’s Gerald R Ford-class carrier.

It is not operation yet and as per naval experts, it may not be for some time still. The PLAN may begin sending aircraft carriers to the Indian Ocean by 2025. The launch of Fujian is expected to provide more room for China to operate in the South China Sea and Taiwan Straits which have strategic significance for China where it is pitted against periodic US naval incursions, including the aircraft carriers. The name Fujian is imbued with significance – being the name of the province closest province to Taiwan, a self-ruling island China has vowed to reunify with the mainland, by force if necessary. Its original launch slated for on 23 April around the 73rd anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) was delayed due to a COVID-19 lockdown Shanghai. China’s Liaoning and Shandong China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was a refit of the Soviet-era ship commissioned in 2012, followed by the indigenously built 2nd aircraft carrier Shandong in 2019. The Type 001 Liaoning and Type 002 Shandong, are about 1,000 feet long and displaced 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes, as per Business Insider.

The Liaoning is the only Chinese aircraft carrier with initial operational capability or the basic level of combat readiness.

China plans to have around five aircraft carriers, according to state media. China is expected to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier next. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .