Aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya is likely to reach the Indian shores by the middle of this month after it entered the Arabian Sea earlier this week. The ship will finally dock at its mother base in Karwar in Karnataka and the Navy has finished all preparations including infrastructure to maintain the ship.
The ship, originally named Gorshkov, was formally inducted into the Navy by Defence Minister AK Antony on November 16 at Sevmash Shipyard, Russia. The ship set sail for India after some days and has covered more than 8,000 nautical miles not-stop from Russia without entering any port enroute.
While two Indian warships escorted it throughout the 45-day journey, the lone aircraft carrier INS Viraat, joined the armada when Vikramaditya entered Indian Navy’s area of responsibility in the Arabian Sea on January one. At present, 12 warships of the Western Fleet are sailing alongside the newly acquired carrier. The 44,570-tonne warship underwent refurbishment for nearly nine years in the Russian shipyard after New Delhi and Moscow inked the deal worth over three billion dollars in 2004.
The ship was refurbished according to the Indian Navy specifications and now has a ski-jump take off strip to enable the MIG-29 Ks and Tejas light combat aircraft to operate. Besides the aircraft, the carrier also has helicopters for reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare, state of the art long and short range missiles, Barak surface to air missiles and electronic warfare equipment along with array of radars. The ship has a crew of 1,600. Once operational after two to three months of integration with the Indian fleet in India, the Navy will have two aircraft carriers including Viraat and Vikramaditya to guard its maritime domain.
The Navy hopes to induct the first indigenously built INS Vikrant by the end of this decade. The ship is now under construction at Cochin Shipyard and hopes to go for sea trials by the end of 2016 of 2017.