Source: Privy Council No. 10
The return from the sea trial of China's third aircraft carrier, Fujian, greatly stimulated a major eastern country - yes, India. Indian Defense Minister Rajnat Singh promised in a recent interview with Indian media that India will soon start building its third aircraft carrier. The Eurasian Times of India made no secret on the 16th that the expansion plan of Indian aircraft carriers was aimed at China.
The picture is a screenshot of foreign media reports
Although India's navy is far from being comparable to China in terms of size and performance, Indian military executives have always been confident that India has a "traditional advantage" over China in the field of aircraft carriers - because India was the first Asian country to have aircraft carriers after World War II.
In 1961, the second-hand light aircraft carrier "Hercules" purchased by India from the United Kingdom was modernized, renamed "Vikram" and joined the Indian Navy, becoming India's first aircraft carrier. It played a key role during the conflict between India and Pakistan in 1971, dispatching more than 4000 carrier based aircraft to attack and blockade the seaports and military bases in East Pakistan.
In 1987, India purchased the retired British light aircraft carrier "Sporting God" and renamed it "Virat", which was not announced until 2017.
Therefore, Indian navy executives have always believed that India has rich experience in the use of aircraft carriers and has actual combat experience, so these advantages can not be remedied by the Chinese navy in the short term.
In spite of that, the Indian navy can't stand watching the Chinese navy magically serve more and more modern aircraft carriers with increasingly advanced performance. According to Singh, the Indian Navy will not only build three aircraft carriers in the future - "We will not stop here. We will build the fifth, sixth and even more."
Obviously, this is a typical manifestation of India's delusion of "China travel, so I also travel". Apart from that, if you look at the construction process of Chinese aircraft carriers and compare the tragic experience of Indian aircraft carriers, you can see how far the gap between the two sides is.
China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning is the former Soviet carrier "Varyag" from Ukraine. When it arrived in China, it was only semi-finished products, and most of its equipment was in disrepair. Even so, according to Western parlance, it began to rebuild in 2005 and launched a sea trial in 2011.
India's first two aircraft carriers were both ready-made second-hand goods obtained from the UK, and the relevant modifications were completed by the UK, and they were outdated and had no comparative value.
The Indian Navy's active "Super Sun King" was refitted from the Russian "Kiev" class aircraft carrier "Golshkov". At that time, the aircraft carrier was damaged due to an accident, and the Russian Navy was unable to repair it due to lack of funds. Finally, it was resold to India in 2004, and promised to carry out a comprehensive renovation and refit. It was initially expected to be delivered around 2009.
This decision exposed the lack of experience of the Indian Navy - how difficult such a major aircraft carrier modification project is to transform the traditional Soviet carrier cruiser into a ski jump aircraft carrier. India has no bottom. As a result, after several twists and turns, the aircraft carrier was not delivered until 2012, which is longer than the refitting time of Liaoning Ship.
Compared with the first domestic aircraft carrier in China and India, the technology gap is even greater. The displacement of Shandong Ship, China's first domestic aircraft carrier, is about 65000 tons, and the main equipment is made in China. Compared with Liaoning Ship, a large number of partial adjustments have been made. The ship was started in 2013, launched in 2017, and the sea trial in 2018. Even the western navy was surprised by the rapid progress.
The displacement of Shandong Ship is about 65000 tons, and the figure shows the data of the aircraft carrier battle group of Shandong Ship
However, India's first domestically made aircraft carrier, "Vikram", has a displacement of only 45000 tons. Since the keel was placed in the Kachin Shipyard in 2009, it has been towed until August 2021 for the first sea trial. During this time, it has also been temporarily "launched" for different reasons, becoming a joke of the world's navy. As for its "kowtow" state during the sea trial, it exposed serious defects in the relevant design of the Indian navy, which was quite similar to the stability of the Fujian naval ship during the sea trial.
What's more ironic is that the "Wickrand" is called a home-made one, and actually a large number of imported equipment is used in the core components, including gas turbines and arresting ropes provided by the United States, the MiG-29K carrier based fighter aircraft of Russia, which will be replaced by the French "Rafale M" carrier based fighter aircraft in the future, and the anti air missiles and radars are from Israel. This also means that if foreign countries interrupt relevant technical support, it will seriously affect the combat readiness of Indian aircraft carriers. The Chief of Staff of the Indian Navy, Harry Kumar, saw this very clearly. In 2022, he publicly warned: "The experience of the Russian Ukrainian conflict shows that if India wants to meet its own security needs, it cannot rely on anyone, but must rely on itself."
This time, the old driver of the Fujian warship that India admired did not need to spend more words. In a word, it basically reached the ceiling of the current conventional aircraft carrier field.
"Vishal" once considered drawing on the design of "Queen Elizabeth" class aircraft carrier
In fact, India has tried to benchmark the design of a super aircraft carrier before, that is, the so-called "Vishal" large domestic aircraft carrier. It adopts ejection takeoff mode, with a displacement of 65000 tons, can accommodate more aircraft, and uses nuclear power as the power system. However, in view of the serious lack of Indian navy in relevant technical fields, the US media disclosed that India still needs a lot of foreign technical support in this regard. It is said that India has negotiated with the US on the introduction of electromagnetic ejection devices, E-2 shipborne early warning aircraft and F-35C fighter aircraft, and also discussed the design of the introduction of the "Queen Elizabeth" class aircraft carrier to the UK.
However, the Indian Navy finally realized that it lacked too much core technology. If the Vishal wanted to force her onto the horse, she would probably have to repeat the mistakes of the Vikram. Now, although Singh has a big voice, he also confirmed that India's third aircraft carrier will be an upgraded version of the Vikram.
In fact, in order to compete with China in the battle of aircraft carriers, India's navy is far from lacking only aircraft carriers themselves. India's Self Government magazine said on the 15th that in addition to the difficulty of building the aircraft carrier itself, the Indian Navy also lacks supporting escort ships. Generally, the escort ship of aircraft carrier battle group is composed of one attack nuclear submarine, several frigates and destroyers, and one supply ship. At present, the performance and quantity of these escort ships of the Indian Navy are still insufficient - India currently has only six anti-aircraft destroyers in total. In the recent Red Sea escort operation, the Indian Navy sent out all five of them at one go, which shows the dilemma of being overstretched.
However, there are as many as 8 055 Daqu, the top air defense force of the Chinese Navy alone, not counting the 052D series air defense destroyers in recent years.
Therefore, Indian media also sighed that if the Indian Navy really wants to build five or six aircraft carriers, as Singh said, it will inevitably need to build a large number of additional escort ships and infrastructure, which means huge investment and crowding out resources of other services. For example, the Indian Air Force has clearly opposed the idea of building a third aircraft carrier, believing that air bases on the shore can provide air support more effectively
