INS Vikramaditya - Making a Proper Carrier Out of a Soviet Ship 

The Kiev's were never carriers, just cruisers with oversized helicopter decks. The ship still has a very small hanger deck. India's indigenous carrier will be a much better carriers.

​@@kdrapertrucker yeah most likely

Это русские по заказу индийцев сделали.

Yup. At Sevmarsh IIRC

We didn't had* now we have experience, we built whole aircraft carrier I'm sure we can upgrade one

Debatable. Choosing the US or an indigenous design would have been wiser than France, a country with a patchy at best history of Carriers, and one of the least reliable Carriers in the world today 🙁

​@@jimtaylor294india views USA as highly unreliable, in the past history they have put harsh sanctions on us whenever India has disagreed with USA

@@jimtaylor294 Is not about the French Carrier, is about the French Carrier Fighter, Rafale is really good, probably the best right now just behind the F-35C, and on par with the F-18E/F. The issue is Rafale does not have folding wings, which may limit the amount of jets you can pack in a medium carrier like this. Along with traditional problems of operating an Stobar.

^ Disagree entirely. The Rafale is not that good, nor the comically overpriced and politically motivated flying pig that's the F-35. The Super-Hornet is good, but that's no vast revelation, as the US has a carrier force that's actually functions all year round, and supporting industry that is at least notionally reliable.

Twice the cost of a new carrier? Vikramaditya's final price tag was 2.35 billion dollars, which is about what it would cost to build a new carrier at that point. Now, do remember that a new-build carrier in a foreign yard would be considerably more expensive (with higher profit margins accounted in). As for your claim, here is a quote from the then Chief of Naval Staff, Adm. Mehta, that he posed to analysts questioning the price : "Can you get me an aircraft carrier for less than 2 billion dollars? If you can, I am going to sign a cheque right now." Yes, India ended up paying considerably more than planned for the Vikramaditya. No, that doesn't mean the ship was exorbitantly priced, because it wasn't. Even in 2004, naval officers in India had already estimated the cost of the refits to exceed 1.5 billion dollars.

Its final cost was 2.3 billion. But India made a new carrier and its cost was 3.5 billion. Its not same price.

I thought CV meant carrier vessel? I guess not.

@@Caktusdud. V is the USN designation for all things aViation. VF are fighter squadrons, VMF Marine fighter squadrons, etc, etc.

@@Caktusdud. wikipedia has a helpful page on USN ship designations: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_classification_symbol Scroll down about half way to the section on cruisers and aircraft carriers.

You can tell it's not a kuznetsov, it is capable of moving under it's own power.

😂😂

Sir, that would have been an interesting idea, but there were a few obstacles to that deal. Firstly, a number of Indian ports would have to receive substantial infrastructure upgrades to handle a ship the size of the Kitty Hawk. Secondly, that time was still one of a bunch of distrust following the 1998 sanctions in response to India's nuclear test. The age of the ship was also a concern. The Baku, while some 25 years old (since laying down), had only seen less than a decade of service (followed by some damage while anchored). The Kitty Hawk-class, on the other hand, had already seen over three decades of hard service each, and would quite possibly not have much longer left in them. These factors basically precluded that purchase. As it was, this would be a wise-ish decision, since by the time Kitty Hawk herself was decommissioned in 2009, there were reports of problems with her hull's structural integrity. Such problems with a new carrier (from India's perspective) would have catastrophic consequences (be it militarily, politically, or financially).

@@anantr99 Sir, I was not aware of the draft problems that would require major investment. That might have been the major problem. The Kitty Hawk class ships were in various states of condition. The JFK was in the worst condition. The Constellation was in good shape from what I saw about 2 or 3 years before the decommission. Yes, American carriers tend to be heavily worked but they tend to be good for 50 plus years. Once you factor in American carrier wings, those planes would outperform Soviet equipment by a significant margin. 20 years of sea duty might be worth it if some ports could have been upgraded. A very pleasant chat with you.

It was a rumor

@@anantr99 It would be a similar story of that of Brazilian French-made carrier, NAe Sao Paulo, bought when 38 years old, the ship only managed to serve 6 active years in Brazilian navy service, spending most of its time in reapairs and port, till they scuttled it.

There was no way India could afford to own and operate a carrier of that size with 85 aircraft at that time. it may not be possible even now. It would be too much of a drain on resources.

Lack of experience at the time. India had only two ex-British Carriers to form a basis of how to Carrier, and had never built one domestically. Naturally the UK could have sold them the HMS Ark Royal (R09) or built an Invincible class or two to order, but the Indians likely considered such options at the time as too expensive. Probably a similar motive for why they didn't investigate buying a used Carrier from the USA.

@@jimtaylor294 The issue with Ark Royal was that she was in very bad shape by 1978-79. She was starting to have a multitude of electrical and mechanical problems, and further service was extremely cost-prohibitive. Building Invincible-class carriers would have been a good idea, but the Indian Navy would ideally want two, and that was considered cost prohibitive (considering that the surface fleet had recently been expanded). A second hand carrier from the Americans was completely out of the question. The USA and India didn't enjoy particularly smooth relations in those days, and even if the USN would have spared a carrier, it would either be a venerable Essex-class carrier (and there were 5-6 ships of that class still floating around), or the Midway or Coral Sea. The Essexes were very old ships that would have little serviceable life left. The Midways would require significant infrastructure upscaling in India to properly use them. As such, this was also out of the question.

@anantrajagopal5797 Some interesting points (especially on the US question), though a couple of points are worth noting: • Ark Royal was having some issues aye, due in part to a planned Life Extension refit being cancelled in the 1960's, alongwith the extremely controversial and in retrospect insane decision in 1966 to run down the Carrier fleet without replacement. The true extent of these issues is still debated in the UK today though, as is questions whether Eagle should have been kept in service instead or whether Argentina would have been daft enough to go territory nicking had Ark Royal been retained / had like Hermes avoided the cutters torch for a couple of years longer. That; and while it's not clear whether a wartime [for lack of better term] refit might have fixed these issues, it's certainly thought provoking. • In 1982 the UK Gov' seriously considered refurbishing Hermes's sistership Bulwark to support Hermes and Invincible while Illustrious was made ready; if not for two boiler room fires in preceeding years she likely would have been, which is an interesting thought as the IN would have the option of buying two Centaur class ships. • Interesting point on the Invincible class option, though it is notable that the IN did only buy one ship with Hermes, and that Australia was planning to buy just one ship (Invincible herself) as a replacement for HMAS Melbourne before the 1982 conflict voided the sale. Makes one wonder if the IN considered the option of buying one Invincible class to order, while purchasing the right and technical assistance to build another domestically under license 🤔

The purchase of Russian equipment will definitely take a back-foot in the times to come. However, saying that no one will buy Russian equipment would also be far fetched. There will be nations who will keep buying big-ticket hardware from Russia simply because they don't have alternatives (such as Russia's pitch for the planned Su-75). There will, however, continue to be small-ticket purchases from many nations. Pretty much the only new naval warships besides submarines Russia has sold abroad recently are two Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates to India (along with two more to be built in India). That deal, while questioned, is still for a bunch of proven warships with far more oversight from India's part (and things such as fixed price clauses) than the entire saga with the Vikramaditya. Russia seems to, however, still be a power that can export submarines. How long they will be able to keep selling Kilo-class submarines (the improved variant under Project 636) remains to be seen, since the newest submarines (the Lada-class) have issues (atleast with the lead ship), to put it lightly.

I don’t think India would describe itself as Western Allied, as a state India charts it’s own route and guards it’s independence assiduously.

"Too slow to evade a missile" Absolute nonsense. Speed hasn't been key to avoiding missiles since the 1960's (unless counting the SR-71 or other niche aircraft), with Countermeasures being the actual main solution. Also worth noting that no Harriers were ever lost to missiles, rather in 1982 the Harriers were downing ostensibly "fast" conventional jets in quantity with their own missiles 😂 . In short: speed isn't key, rather the whole package is. That: and the YAK-38 never worked right 😂

Su-30s (a modification of the Su-27 for the Navy) were mostly used on aircraft carriers of this class.

Would appreciate more on indian navy

True; though a design born of compromise, the Kiev's would've been credibly lethal with a VTOL jet as good as the Sea-Harrier FRS.1 and the FA.2 successor to protect the ship from air attack.

Yeah it's more kind of philosophy. The Indian Navy won a war in 1971, and changed the map of the world. At that time INS Vikrant played a crucial or central role in the blockhead of East Pakistan today's Bangladesh by establishing air superiority in the sea. Indian Navy currently wants aircraft carriers for giving air cover for its fleets and other assets. So, they have gone with such medium skijump carrier, in future there are plans to built a super carrier.

Liaoning, Vikramaditya, Kuznetzov. All were designed in Ex-USSR.

Practically every naval analyst, and most naval enthusiasts (myself included) would disagree with you on that. India is quite certainly a limited-projection blue water Navy. They have the capability to maintain a near-constant decent-sized presence quite a bit away from the Indian Ocean. That is not to say they have everything going for them: The submarine fleet is aging (and is being replaced far too slowly), and the Navy hasn't had large-scale mine warfare capabilities for 3 years now (keeping helicopters hunting mines out of consideration for a moment). However, they have a fairly strong Navy, and retain a good logistics chain for the fleet. Now, with the recent announcement for the construction of 5 new fleet replenishment ships (each of 45,000 tons), the Indian Navy will reach a level of having the logistical chain to sustain significantly greater blue water operations. Combined with additions to the fleet in the next few years, that will place the Indian Navy firmly in the second tier of blue water Navies, right up with forces such as the French Navy, and right behind the US and British Navies.

​@anantrajagopal5797 Arguably they've been a credibly blue water capable navy since the mid'80's, when they introduced the former HMS Hermes and a few squadrons of Sea-Harrier FRS.51's to their fleet. Prior to that they only had the former HMS Hercules, which while useful was rather limited.

@@anantr99 The French Navy actually has more blue water capability than the British, but yeh even France and Britain are still more powerful than India despite all these fake rankings.

@@jimtaylor294 Why couldn't India just keep using those old foreign ships and planes to be a blue water navy?

@@tritium1998 Simply because any equipment becomes old over time. You can't find spares, and your operational and maintenance costs go up. To add to that, no equipment can be upgraded beyond a certain point. Sure, in theory, one could use a WW2-era destroyer as a nice corvette today, but to do something along those lines, you'd need to rebuild the ship so significantly that it'd just be more efficient (from a time, cost, and complexity perspective) to build a new corvette. The same reasoning goes here. Any ship, beyond a certain point, is little more than a harbour queen unless you start pumping in disproportionately large sums of money to keep it running.

why didn't they lol

@@niuchajianfa6222 I think they did! The video shows they also had one they built themselves.

@@azmachinist2421 was it less than "the Russian plan"? you can't just eat half of your claim

@@niuchajianfa6222 They did not say. Watch again.

@@niuchajianfa6222at 12:10 the video says the carrier they built is the INS Vikrant.

Because Indian politics... is almost as weird as Russia's 😂 That said: they tend to buy from all over.

​@@jimtaylor294because the West except for French likes to immediately slap arms embargo and economic sanctions, and start arming Pakistan whenever there is even a mild disagreement with India. Ps this deal was during when USA had placed sanctions on india during the 90s

@aaravtulsyan Hmm. In my observation Pakistan was typically Soviet/RF backed; at least based on the equipment typically seen.

@@jimtaylor294 then no offence you havent even read the basic of history my friend. Pakistan was backed by the Western powers under SEATO and Major Non NATO Ally. It got premium american equipment at subdized prices to be used against India. Heck in 1971 when India was liberating Bangladesh, the US and UK sided with the genocidhl Pakistani Junta and sent a carrier group each to the bay of Bengal to pressure India

@aaravtulsyan I didn't deny that the West sold arms to - among other things - Pakistan, rather that news footage and details from battlefield results almost always showed or mentioned Soviet equipment. That, and the most famous Tank engagements of the Indo-Pakistani wars (known over here anyway) was between Indian Centurions and Pakistani Soviet-built armour. Yes I know India bought a lot of stuff from the Russians too; it just doesn't get mentioned often 🤔