INS Vikramaditya inducted into Indian Navy

Source

NEW DELHI: A new era has dawned in India's naval combat capabilities. Aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya was commissioned into the Indian Navy at a Russian shipyard on Saturday, ending a five-year delay to the $2.33 billion project.

The 44,570-tonne carrier, which will operate supersonic MiG-29K fighters from its deck, is the largest-ever warship to be inducted by India, as also the most expensive single military platform ever bought. India's solitary carrier till now, the 55-year-old INS Viraat, will now be a poor second at 28,000-tonne.

Earlier called Admiral Gorshkov, INS Vikramaditya was commissioned at the Sevmash Shipyard in northern Arctic at a ceremony attended by defence minister A K Antony, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin and senior officials of the two countries.

The warship, with its array of fighters, helicopters and other weapon systems, will go a long way in bolstering the Navy's blue-water capabilities, and is already being described as "a game-changer" in the region.

Antony said INS Vikramaditya would significantly enhance the Navy's reach and capability, and pointed out that aircraft carriers have been part of the Indian naval force structure for decades. "The induction of Vikramaditya, with its integral MiG-29K fighters and Kamov-31 helicopters, not only reinforces this central policy but also adds a new dimension to our Navy's operational capabilities," he said.

This Aircraft carrier should be posted in the Bay of Bengal,Just in case the Chineses try something
The old aircraft carrier with the Harrier jets should be posted in the Arabian sea,thats enough to keep Porkistan in check

Inb4 "Hurr durr The US has 11 Super-Carriers,India sucks herp derp"

CommanderShawnzer said:
Inb4 "Hurr durr The US has 11 Super-Carriers,India sucks herp derp"

I thought that you would be the pessimist saying that, lol. In any case, India needs to worry more about their (chinese) underwater threat, rather than their carriers. As far as I know, China has only one proper carrier in active service.

^ carrier is an interesting thing. if a carrier battlegroup is deployed properly, bay of bengal will be fully secure from any kind of chinese threat other than subs and ballistic missiles.

chinese navy is brown water navy anyways, to say properly, us is the only proper blue water navy out there.

now the thing to see is, if the 13.5k crore rupee old russian ship is really worth it or not. and if our navy pilots can actually land on the short little deck or slip into ocean at the other end of the craft, essentially taking a muti hundred rupee miggy to the bottom of the sea.

(there will be atleast a few some incidents, there has to be)

icebags said:
^ carrier is an interesting thing. if a carrier battlegroup is deployed properly, bay of bengal will be fully secure from any kind of chinese threat other than subs and ballistic missiles.

chinese navy is brown water navy anyways, to say properly, us is the only proper blue water navy out there.

now the thing to see is, if the 13.5k crore rupee old russian ship is really worth it or not. and if our navy pilots can actually land on the short little deck or slip into ocean at the other end of the craft, essentially taking a muti hundred rupee miggy to the bottom of the sea. (there will be atleast a few some incidents, there has to be)

Dont worry,They use MiG 29's,Not MiG 21's

Meanwhile in Russia

Russian Minister of Defence : We milked those Indians dry for ol' Gorshkov,Comrade :grin:

Putin : Good Job,Comrade.Stoopid Indians.We took them for a ride. :grin:

Russian Minister of Defence :Cheers!*Raise Glasses of Vodka*

icebags said:
^ carrier is an interesting thing. if a carrier battlegroup is deployed properly, bay of bengal will be fully secure from any kind of chinese threat other than subs and ballistic missiles.

chinese navy is brown water navy anyways, to say properly, us is the only proper blue water navy out there.

Agreed.

CommanderShawnzer said:
Dont worry,They use MiG 29's,Not MiG 21's

one of the reasons chinese did not expand their carrier numbers is this carrier landing thing. its even more difficult for people who have never operated proper runway landing carriers.

u can always miss that small little dot on ocean while landing and be forced for a 2nd pass landing approach. if u go slow u will drop to sea before u hit deck, if u go fast, u will jump into sea taking all those arrester cables and miggy29 with u. us lost numerous planes because of this, and russian thought it was too expensive to operate a carrier and gave up the idea.

another thing is, carriers are better with nuclear power plant, rather than diesel.

W

CommanderShawnzer said:
Dont worry,They use MiG 29's,Not MiG 21's

Meanwhile in Russia

Russian Minister of Defence : We milked those Indians dry for ol' Gorshkov,Comrade
Putin : Good Job,Comrade.Stoopid Indians.We took them for a ride.

Russian Minister of Defence :Cheers!*Raise Glasses of Vodka*

beggars can't be choosers.it was pure luck that Russia even agreed to sell it after just 9 years of commissioning into active service because of the economic crisis at that time.in comparison China managed to buy just the stripped hulk(not even engine & rudder) from Ukraine,that too on the pretext of using it as a "floating casino",then worked on it for 14 years to finally rebuild it as their 1st aircraft carrier.

^admiral gorshkov was launched in 1982, decommissioned in 1996. its 30 yrs old.

icebags said:
^admiral gorshkov was launched in 1982, decommissioned in 1996. its 30 yrs old.

But if you look at the ship's current pictures, it does not resemble the old Gorshkov.

Extreme Gamer said:
But if you look at the ship's current pictures, it does not resemble the old Gorshkov.

The news sites were throwing words like "retrofitted" "refurbished" i guess they meant "modified"
WTF,this has a Deisel engine :shock:

OOOHHHH.This ship is named Admiral Gorshkov.It is a Kiev Class carrier
and not a Admiral Gorshkov class frigate

icebags said:
^admiral gorshkov was launched in 1982, decommissioned in 1996. its 30 yrs old.

'Tis the same ship,The Ruskies modified it for us

Also,We will get another Indeginous AC INS Vikrant(Not to be confused by the 60 year old PoS hand-me-down Brit AC of the same name) by 2016

W

when talking about military hardware date of commissioning is the standard not date of actual completion of manufacture which in Admiral Gorshkov's case is 1987.also "30 years old" is irrelevant for a retro-fitted/extensive work done ship because it is not some food product with a fixed expiry date.to put it simply you can put a core i7 & R9 270X in a 10 year old sufficiently large cabinet & though it may not look nice it will get the job done.

Extreme Gamer said:
But if you look at the ship's current pictures, it does not resemble the old Gorshkov.

admiral gorshkov was mainly a missile cruiser cum VSTOL (vertial &/or short take off and landing) carrier. a bit like current indian viraat, which is vstol - operated vertical landing harriers.

admiral gorshkov has been modified to STOBAR (short take off arrested recovery/landing) structure for Vikramaditya. & to do that they changed the missile deck into an elevated runway, which helps the planes to have some upward velocity before they are left in the air.
they say 80% of vikramaditya's is new. but there is the 20% old stuff remains, which i dont know details about.

whitestar_999 said:
when talking about military hardware date of commissioning is the standard not date of actual completion of manufacture which in Admiral Gorshkov's case is 1987.also "30 years old" is irrelevant for a retro-fitted/extensive work done ship because it is not some food product with a fixed expiry date.to put it simply you can put a core i7 & R9 270X in a 10 year old sufficiently large cabinet & though it may not look nice it will get the job done.

kinda agreed, but things tend to loose integrity & flexibility as they age. the joints gets harder, bolts get rustier and unforeseen things may happen. its like a new piece of steel can withstand a lot of pressure and will show signs of surface bends before breaking, but old steels when they get harder, may not show any signs before they break, and obviously will break before what it could take when new.

i m not sure abt i7, but after 100yrs i am not sure, molicular diffusion will happen and internal structure may deteriorate. u can try writing something on a RW dvd today , then u try to read it after 5-6 yrs, and see if u can still read it without any errors ?

anyways it will be interesting to see how our navy operates this.

Ye Olde Gorshkov
*upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Carrier_Baku.jpg/457px-Carrier_Baku.jpg

This looks like a "Chopper Carrier" with extra guns or something

INS Vikramaditya
*upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/INS_Vikramaditya_during_trails.jpg/800px-INS_Vikramaditya_during_trails.jpg
Now this is an Aircraft Carrier

with less guns though

icebags said:
admiral gorshkov was mainly a missile cruiser cum VSTOL (vertial &/or short take off and landing) carrier. a bit like current indian viraat, which is vstol - operated vertical landing harriers.

admiral gorshkov has been modified to STOBAR (short take off arrested recovery/landing) structure for Vikramaditya. & to do that they changed the missile deck into an elevated runway, which helps the planes to have some upward velocity before they are left in the air.
they say 80% of vikramaditya's is new. but there is the 20% old stuff remains, which i dont know details about.

anyways it will be interesting to see how our navy operates this.

I said the same thing.With pictures :3

^u must read the walls of texts i wrote @ post 12 , to know the little secret

These Chineses suck like us lol
Even their AC(Lianloling) is a modified Kiev class carrier

INS Vikramaditya + New INS Vikrant in BoB = Communist Yellow people wetting there pantz
Ye olde INS Vikrant ~~equipped with remote controlled,Explosive filled MiG 21's in Arabian sea = Paki's knowing the true meaning of suicide bombing~~ well,INS Vikrant only supports Helo's and VTOL's.Crap.

W

well it all depends on conditions & quality of repairs & testing.still that does not change the fact that India had no other option & no matter what the cost now this deal still get more pros than cons.

P.S.btw i can still read DVDs i burnt 7 years ago.

^ dvd,dvd-r,dvd+r have a longer lifespan of 15-30 yrs may be more depending on manufacture quality, but dvd-rw has just few years, followed by cd-rw.

Optical media longevity

may be it what india could get best from abroad, but initially the deal with russia was signed @ rs ~2k crore. now finally it became 13.5k crore after lots of negotiations and this n that.

Actually, the Chinese navy has carrier killer missiles which are a bigger threat than their carrier itself. DF-21 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

W

^^it is not proven in field yet & any military in the world use such non-proven weapons only as a kind of last resort.

whitestar_999 said:
^^it is not proven in field yet & any military in the world use such non-proven weapons only as a kind of last resort.

The missile's works. The guidance system is not ready yet though. The Chinese threat is actually 10 years away.

The Brahmos and Dhanush can be used effectively against ships.

the INS vikramaditya will be docked at karwar naval base.Most likely the INS vikrant in 2017-18 will be manning the BoB.India has plans to make 2 more after vikrant in which atleast one might be nuclear powered and CATOBAR.Regarding chinese aircraft carrier, pls note that india has been operating air craft carriers for decades now and has a lot of experience whereas its a new thing for the chinese The real worry is that we may not have support to make 2 carrier battle groups. The navy has to step up its submarine programs.

Why cannot we ourselves make such ships even nuclear powered ones. Why waste so much money on a 30 year old ship which is provided to us like a refurbished GPU or a CPU at a low cost but this ship cost is on par with a new ship.
Recruit more young people and make ships faster than buying from others. It is sheer stupidity and negligence or more to say commission making exercises from such orders.

bavusani said:
Why cannot we ourselves make such ships even nuclear powered ones. Why waste so much money on a 30 year old ship which is provided to us like a refurbished GPU or a CPU at a low cost but this ship cost is on par with a new ship.
Recruit more young people and make ships faster than buying from others. It is sheer stupidity and negligence or more to say commission making exercises from such orders.

umm...willpower...and anything which has "nuclear" in their name prompts a group of people to go up in arms against it(regardless of the intention).
And Indian government as of now is pretty lax on the defense part.
they don't really give a damn.

^^^YOU ARE ALIVE!!!!!! :grin:

am le harbinger

erm india has plans to make a nuclear powered aircraft carrier...At first indian navy wanted to see whether the scientist could make a compact nuclear reactor for the submarine(Arihant).Since we could make it compact enough for the submarine, having a nuclear reactor in a aircraft carrier will be a lot easier. Infact Mr Anil Kakodkar, the ex Director of BARC even offered the navy to put the reactor in an IAC. AFAIK, the navy is seriously considering this option.

Also another point i wanted to discuss is people commenting that india paid equal to a new ship. Pls show me where can you buy a new aircraft carrier for $2.3Bn. I am not disputing the fact that this project indeed cost an arm and a leg but this is sheer exaggeration. Even the likes of U.S and U.K end up spending about $8-9 Bn on an aircraft carrier. The best option is to manufacture locally and this is what we are doing. Just give it time.