Sir
You are forgetting one very important thing. The MIG29's are severely short legged. They are not being launched through a catapult, it is through a ski jump. Most likely the pilots will have to take off with half the weight as they would have already burned up most of their fuel during the take off. I would say they would have a maximum patrol radius of 250-300 km. In order for the aircraft to be effective against the enemy, IN commanders would have to bring the Carrier forward making it vulnerable to enemy's ASM strikes.
@
Penguin
What you say depends on where the Carrier is to be used.
If its against Pakistan -
1. India does not require a CBG to blockade Karachi and Gwadar. It can be accomplished without them easily enough.
2. If its against Pakistan - then IN will have access to IAF refuelers and other resources to be effective in a task assigned to it.
3. Alternatively they could just be used as decoys to add another threat from a completely different direction to the PAF's highly overburdened and over-stretched resources.
Multiple ways it can be used..
However this particular Carrier is
not potent in an individual situation in an area which has:
1. No Indian land based cover (Yes the Malacca Straits do have Indian land support)
2. The opposing faction has a professional airforce with the numbers to back it up.
In both such scenarios, this Carrier is next to pointless.
However this Carrier can be thought of as the stepping stone to IN getting familiarized with
modern Carrier ops with high performance jets on a
proper Carrier - the last one barely cut it at around 20,000 tons.
The IAC 2 - at 65,000 tons and a CATOBAR would be
as big a leap forward from the Vikramaditya's capabilities as Vikramaditya has been from the Virat. That means a major leap.
Lastly, we never know how geopolitics shapes up, if say in a decade or so India decides to get F-35 for Vikaramaditya (transferring the MiG 29K's to the IAF and going for an off the shelf buy of two dozen F-35's), that would change the equations
completely.