Chinese media quoted that Indian Chief of Naval Staff visited Indian Shipyard which is responsible for its Vikrant homemade aircraft carrier on Jan 16, after China’s Ministry of Defense confirmed its first homemade aircraft carrier. Recent photos show that Vikrant Aircraft Carrier is now seeing its flight deck and island being installed.
But an Indian official said: “Ironically, many times, a lot of equipment are not installed after being shipped to the carrier. They are piled up and affect construction of the phase two engineer.”
Indian’s largest newspaper “The Hindu” reported recently that after several postpones, Vikrant’s progress is still behind schedule. It said that Russia delayed delivery of aviation operation equipment and thus hindered the whole construction of the aircraft carrier.
Initiated in November 2006 and started construction in April 2007, Ins Vikrant Aircraft Carrier was expected to be completed in 2011, but its first keel was lifted till 2009, and the construction plan had to be postponed to 2014.
Ins Vikrant Aircraft Carrier has been launched for three times, firstly for making room for building civilian vessels in December 2011, secondly in August 2013 when the warship structure was not completed and third time in June 2015 when the major structure was finished.
Besides, construction of this aircraft carrier of India was also stopped for several times due to shortage of funds. Therefore, the scheduled delivery in 2018 is probably hard to achieve. “The Hindu” said the Chief of Naval Staff would have retired then.
In contrast, China is being quick in building its first homemade aircraft carrier, which is rumor to be code named 001A and might be launched in 2016. The construction of this aircraft carrier should begin in the end of 2013, according to media reports quoting “authoritative information”, and has been in quick progress recently.