INS Vikrant, India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, heads out to sea

Source: Indian Express, The Hindu, The Business Standard and PIB

What is the News?

The much-awaited sea trials of India’s maiden indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-1) ‘Vikrant’ have begun.

About Indigenous Aircraft Carrier(IAC) ‘Vikrant’:

• IAC-1 Vikrant has been designed by the Indian Navy’s Directorate of Naval Design (DND). It is being built at Cochin Shipyard Limited(CSL), a Public Sector Shipyard under the Ministry of Shipping.

Key Features of IAC-01 Vikrant:

• Vikrant is the first aircraft carrier designed and built in India. It has over 76 percent of the material and equipment which is indigenous.
• Vikrant is named after the Majestic-class aircraft carrier, which was operated by the Indian Navy from 1961 to 1997.
• The ship is 262 m long, It has over 2,300 compartments designed for a crew of around 1700 people including specialised cabins to accommodate women officers.
• The ship is equipped with numerous high-end technologies, including network-centric distributed data processing and control systems and state-of-the-art weapons such as the Barak LR-SAM (long-range surface-to-air missile) and sensors.

Why does it matter that this is a 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.