Aircraft carrier 'INS Vikrant' will have great significance for India: Chin

[anilindia]

Beijing: Chinese defence experts have said 'INS Vikrant' would have great significance for India as it would allow the Indian Navy to wade into the Pacific Ocean - which Beijing considers as its backyard.

"This bears great significance to Indian Navy. It makes India only the fifth country after the US, Russia, Britain and France to have such capabilities," Senior Captain Zhang Junshe, Vice-President of China's Naval Research Institute, told the state-run CCTV today.

India launched its first indigenously-built aircraft carrier today, a landmark moment in the $5 billion or 500 crores project that seeks to project the country's power and check the rising influence of China.

The Indian Navy will have lead over China as it will have two aircraft carriers by the end of this year with INS Vikramaditya, the re-fitted carrier from Russia joining INS Viraat, which is already in service even though Vikrant was expected to be operational by 2018, he said.

"Which means by the end of this year India will become the only country in Asia to have two aircraft carriers. This will enhance the overall capabilities especially the power projection capabilities of the Indian Navy," Zhang said.

Ruling out any race for more carriers in the region, Zhang defended India and China having more carriers since they have vast coasts and huge populations and the importance of defending the sea lanes far from home due to dependence on external trade.

Last year China launched its first aircraft carrier, Lioning. Its hull was imported from Ukraine and refurbished in China.

China also subsequently launched J-15 aircraft to operate from its deck. The ship with over 50,000 tonnes displacement will have about 30 aircraft on its deck.

China is reportedly building two more aircraft carriers but their schedules are not known yet.
Zhang earlier told the state-run China Daily that with Vikrant, the Indian Navy will be more capable of patrolling distant oceans.

"India's first self-made carrier, along with reinforced naval strength, will further disrupt the military balance in South Asia," he said.

India is very likely to quicken its pace to steer eastward to the Pacific, where the US and China are competing to dominate.

The launch of the Vikrant as well the first nuclear submarine Arihant also aroused the curiosity and concerns among analysts from different state-run think tanks in China.

"The new indigenous carrier will further strengthen India's naval power and also add some bargaining chips with the world's major military vendors such as Russia," Wang Daguang, a researcher of military equipment based in Beijing told the Daily.

Song Xiaojun, a military commentator in Beijing, said the Vikrant uses technology from the 1980s and thus serves as an experiment for the Indian Navy to set technical standards for
future vessels.

Aircraft carrier 'INS Vikrant' will have great significance for India: China | NDTV.com

 

[BJP*]

INS Vikrant to put China at sea

The biggest gain is that this ship was indigenously designed and built by us. If we have to be a big superpower, we must have the capability to build ships of such calibre ourselves. We will continue to build some more ships of the same class.

This brings us close to our maritime strategy of having three aircraft carriers. The idea is that two out of three must be fully operational all the time. One can be deployed on the eastern seaboard and the other one on the western seaboard.

Our areas of responsibility increased significantly and we are now sailing into what I would like to call the Indo-Pacific region. All the maritime traffic passes through this area (and the Malacca Straits) and we need to maintain a good presence in this region.

An aircraft carrier is a huge instrument to project force and this gives us a huge advantage over China that is still far behind on experience in aircraft carriers. China is getting its first aircraft carrier and its navy doesn’t have any right now.

We are years ahead of it in terms of experience and capability, and it will take time for the Chinese to get their act together. It takes years to induct a carrier and it has to work with other forces.

It also takes five to seven years to build maritime doctrines for an aircraft carrier and in this area, we have decades of experience.

Even though China has more nuclear submarines than us, how long can it remain in water without any major logistic base in this region? Also, we are getting the P8I aircraft, which is an excellent anti-submarine warfare aircraft, from the Americans.

That will help us neutralise China’s advantage over us in submarine capabilities.

The MiG-29K is a wonderful aircraft and it we will help maintain an impenetrable bubble of at least 300 nautical miles around an aircraft carrier or a carrier battle group. This gives us a massive strategic reach and power.

Finally, the fact that SAIL produced this quality of steel and cut it here is a huge boost for us. They were resistant at first and we even thought of buying the steel from Singapore, which is the global hub. But now, we have got the steel and we have learnt to cut it for this ship.

(Admiral Sureesh Mehta was the chief of naval staff between 2006 and 2009, and was also a naval aviator. He flew the Sea Hawks and landed them routinely on the earlier INS Vikrant. He spoke to dna’s Saikat Datta)

INS Vikrant to put China at sea - India - DNA

 

[BJP*]