Indian Navy to build aircraft carrier at home

India has unveiled plans to build an aircraft carrier and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Arun Prakash, said that the carrier would be built at the Cochin shipyard. “The ADS (Air Defence Ship) is our biggest ship building project, and we are extremely keen that it should get off the ground, and we are very hopeful it will be a grand success. It is a very complex project, not many countries have built aircraft carriers, and for us, it is the first time we are entering such an ambitious project,” Prakash said.

Earlier this year, the Indian Government finalized the purchase of the Russian aircraft carrier- The Admiral Gorshkov in a $1.5billion deal, bringing nuclear rival China within range. India’s only carrier at present, the INS Viraat, was built for defence and has a limited range, but the Admiral Gorshkov will give the navy the capacity to put a carrier taskforce into the South China Sea within range of China.

Russia will take five years to refit the Gorshkov, intended as a temporary replacement for the INS Vikrant, decommissioned in the late 1990s, until India can build its own carrier.

Italian state-owned ship building company Fincantieri has signed two agreements with the Cochin Shipyard for the construction of the new aircraft carrier. The planned 38,00 tonne air defence ship will be one of the largest aircraft carriers in service with conventional propulsion based on GE?s LM2500 gas turbines.