INDIA'S GROWING: AIRCRAFT CARRIER CAPABILITY

With the much-awaited INS Vikrant expected to be fully operational with the Indian Navy in mid-2024, India will have two functional aircraft carriers after almost a decade. However, three flat-tops are required to ensure at least two are at sea at any given point. That goal seems overly optimistic under the current budgetary constraints, but abandoning it would be a catastrophic mistake. A special report

Recent reports suggest that the construction of China's third, fourth and fifth full-sized aircraft carriers is progressing steadily alongside expansive infrastructure work, indicating there will be several such large vessels produced by the communist state.

After inducting its first 65,000-tonne carrier Liaoning in 2012, China has now operationalised its domestically-built Shandong (Type-001A) carrier, even as it constructs three more. The third aircraft carrier- Fujian is also being fitted out and may be inducted soon into the Chinese Navy. The PLA Navy is projected to operate a massive fleet of up to ten carriers by 2049. As Senior Captain Li Jie, an analyst at the Naval Research Institute, the PLA Navy's strategic think tank, said in the 2009 report China's Maritime Rights and Navy: "No great power that has become a strong power has achieved this without developing carriers."

The Indian Navy is taking this threat seriously. In August 2019, Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh stated that in keeping with China's ongoing naval expansion, India required at least three aircraft carriers to meet its operational needs in the region. This need is widely endorsed by the Indian and Western strategic communities.

Currently, the Indian Navy's only fully Vikramaditya, operating carrier is the INS while the indigenous INS Vikrant is yet to be fully operationalised with its full fleet of combat aircraft and helicopters as well as weapons.

INS Vikrant: Steep sailing curve

While China constructed its first fully indigenous aircraft carrier in three years, India's Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC)-1 INS Vikrant has been under construction till 2023. Such long delays in Indian defence projects aren't unusual, with prominent examples being the Tejas fighter aircraft, Arjun main battle tank and the Nag missile- all of which went through more than 30 years of development.