What is IAC-1?
- This is the first aircraft carrier designed and built in India.
- An aircraft carrier is one of the most potent marine assets for a nation, which enhances a Navy’s capability to travel far from its home shores to carry out air domination operations.
- An aircraft carrier generally leads as the capital ship of a carrier strike/battle group. As the carrier is a valuable and sometimes vulnerable target, it is usually escorted in the group by destroyers, missile cruisers, frigates, submarines, and supply ships.
- IAC-1 has been designed by the Indian Navy’s Directorate of Naval Design (DND), and is being built at Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL), a public sector shipyard under the Ministry of Shipping.
Importance of Made-in-India warship
- Only five or six nations currently have the capability of manufacturing an aircraft carrier — India joins this elite club now.
- India’s earlier aircraft carriers were either built by the British or the Russians. The INS Vikramaditya, currently the Navy’s only aircraft carrier that was commissioned in 2013, started out as the Soviet-Russian Admiral Gorshkov. The country’s two earlier carriers, INS Vikrant and INS Viraat, were originally the British-built HMS Hercules and HMS Hermes before being commissioned into the Navy in 1961 and 1987 respectively.
- According to the Navy, over 76 per cent of the material and equipment on board IAC-1 is indigenous.
- The Navy calculates that about 80-85 per cent of the project cost of approximately Rs 23,000 crore has been ploughed back into the Indian economy.
The Name, INS Vikrant
- INS Vikrant, a Majestic-class 19,500-tonne warship, was the name of India’s much-loved first aircraft carrier, a source of immense national pride over several decades of service before it was decommissioned in 1997.
- India acquired the Vikrant from the United Kingdom in 1961, and the carrier played a stellar role in the 1971 war with Pakistan that led to the birth of Bangladesh.
- The Vikrant was deployed in the Bay of Bengal, and its two air squadrons of Sea Hawk fighter jets and Alize surveillance aircraft were used in strikes on ports, merchant ships, and other targets, and to prevent Pakistani forces from escaping through maritime routes.
The Weapons Onboard
- The Navy has not officially revealed specific details of the weapons and aircraft that INS Vikrant will carry.
- However, the new warship is comparable to India’s existing carrier INS Vikramaditya, which is a 44,500-tonne vessel and can carry up to 34 aircraft, including both fighter jets and helicopters.
- IAC-1 will be “the most potent sea-based asset”, which will operate the Russian-made MiG-29K fighter aircraft and Kamov-31 Air Early Warning Helicopters, both of which are already in use on the Vikramaditya.
- The new Vikrant will also operate the soon-to-be-inducted MH-60R Seahawk multirole helicopter manufactured by the American aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin, and the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) built by Bengaluru-based Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
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