- Wednesday, April 24, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
DAYS after India handed over to its navy the country’s first indigenous aircraft-carrier INS Vikrant, the largest warship ever built in the South Asian nation, China’s belligerent Global Times tabloid, which is known for its strong nationalistic stance, cited experts from that country saying while a big gap persists between Vikrant and China’s third aircraft-carrier Fujian, yet India’s “long and arduous road to producing the Vikrant shows New Delhi’s ambition and determination to become a maritime power”.
Vikrant was handed over to the Indian navy by India’s state-owned Cochin Shipyard Limited in the southern state of Kerala ahead of its planned induction into service in August. The carrier’s construction started in 2009 and a sum of around Rs 20,000 crore were spent. Rigorous user-acceptance trials were carried out between August 2021 and July 2022 before Vikrant was eventually handed over to the Indian navy.
“During the long period of time from 1999 (when the design of Vikrant began) to 2022, China made a breakthrough by launching three aircraft carriers. India’s slow pace in building its first indigenous aircraft carrier shows the difficulty of the process. China and India’s indigenous development of aircraft carriers started from the same place – the former Soviet Union,” the Global Times said.
It cited Chinese military expert Song Zhongping as telling it that the base of India’s military industry is relatively weak and hence developing indigenous aircraft-carriers is a challenge. He noted that while China is capable of designing entire aircraft carriers by itself, India could only do it partially.
However Song added that India is not new to aircraft carriers as it has a relatively long history of making use of them.
“India bought two aircraft carriers from Britain in the 1960s and 1980s, both of which have since been decommissioned. The Vikramaditya, a 45,000-ton active carrier of the Indian Navy, was purchased from Russia in 2004, media reports said,” the Times added.
Song further said that India has always believed that “the Indian Ocean is India’s ocean” and there is a need to grow a carrier-centric navy. He added that since India sees itself as an important part of the globe’s major political and military powers, it becomes inevitable that it would make aircraft carriers as a key part of its power strategy.
He also said that New Delhi’s “determination to pursue an independent national defense should not be underestimated”.
