Posted on 11/11/2013 8:01:23 AM PST by MBT ARJUN
The long-delayed $2.3-billion aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya (Admiral Gorshkov) will be inducted into the Indian Navy by defence minister AK Antony during his Russia visit slated between November 15 and 17.
The 45,000-tonne Kiev class warship, rechristened by the Navy as Vikramaditya, sailed out of the Sevmash shipyard in northern Russia in July this year for trials. After ‘sustained full-power’ trials, it will now return to the shipyard for final polish and will be ready for handover to the Navy on November 15, when the defence minister visits Russia, MoD sources said.
Antony will ‘accept’ the aircraft carrier on November 15 ahead of the sailing and it’s expected to reach India in December end or early January year, officials said. The minister will also attend the meeting of the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation (IR-IGCMTC) held every year, alternately in the two nations, where future cooperation in defence issues is decided.
He will discuss a number of deals, including issues related to the ongoing Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft being developed by Russia jointly with Hindustan Aeronautics.
The visit was earlier scheduled to take place in the third week of October, but due to ill-health, Antony was unable to go then. A 1,000-member Indian Navy crew and technical team, headed by a two-star officer, is already in Russia to take delivery of the warship.
Once inducted, it will be the second aircraft carrier in the Navy after INS Viraat, giving India a strategic advantage in the Indian Ocean. Vikramaditya, which was scheduled to be delivered in 2008, was supposed to have been handed over to India on December 4, 2012, but sea trials in September that year revealed the ship’s boilers were not fully functional.
Vikramaditya was bought by India in 2004 for R4,500 crore and sent to Sevmash in the Severodvinsk port-city off the White Sea for a refit that year. Since then, the shipyard haggled for a price hike for the refurbishing work and forced India to pay it nearly R13,000 crore in 2010 after a three-year negotiation, resulting in acrimony in bilateral ties.
India had also bought a 45-aircraft MiG-29K combat plane that would operate from aboard Vikramaditya and the first batch of 16 of these planes have already been delivered and are currently based at INS Hansa naval air base in Goa.
Vikramaditya is a key component of Indian Navy’s plans to operate at least two aircraft carriers on both the western and eastern seaboards in the future, as power projection platforms in the Indian Ocean Region, along with its Indigenous Aircraft Carriers (IACs) of the Vikrant class being built at Kochi. The first of
the three Vikrant-class ships was launched in the waters on August 12 at the Cochin Shipyard and is slated for induction by 2018
“inducted into”
The term is “commissioned.”
The Indians must not have paid very much with the front smooshed like that. I guess there's no carfax in India?
“Socialism destroys a nation.”
Diversity doesn’t help. Ten years ago I told a limey cow-orker that England would rue the day she failed to expel the muzzies. He got so mad he couldn’t even speak; he just sat there and sputtered.
I wonder what he thinks about Blighty’s muzzie problem now.
Interesting that both China and India have just recently commissioned their first real aircraft carriers...
A subtle arms race...?
If they get one of these they should call it a "Virmana"....
I’m okay with the Indians having a more expansive navy. They are a strange wild card in the global community. They aren’t for the West, they aren’t for the Middle East, and they aren’t for China. India is for India. In the case that tensions get worse between the US and the ME or China, they are a nice stress point to keep them looking over their shoulder.
I agree, an independent India is a good thing.
India has been operating ex-royal Navy carriers for atleast 50 years now. This is the 3rd and the indigenous 4th will join hopefully in the next 5-10 years
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