INS Vikrant (Indigenous Aircraft Carrier)

INS Vikrant is the Indian Navy's first aircraft carrier designed and constructed within India, formally commissioned on 2 September 2022 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in Kochi, Kerala. The vessel was developed under the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC-1) programme, sanctioned by the Cabinet Committee on Security in stages beginning in 2002, with the keel laid in February 2009. It bears the name of the original INS Vikrant, a Majestic-class light carrier acquired from Britain that served from 1961 to 1997 and played a decisive role enforcing the naval blockade of East Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War. The new ship's design was led by the Navy's in-house Directorate of Naval Design, with construction managed by CSL, a public-sector undertaking under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, making it a flagship of the Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) defence-manufacturing agenda.

The carrier displaces approximately 43,000 tonnes at full load, measures around 262 metres in length, and is powered by four General Electric LM2500 gas turbines driving two shafts, delivering a top speed near 28 knots and an endurance of roughly 7,500 nautical miles. It employs a STOBAR (Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery) configuration, featuring a ski-jump ramp on the bow and arrestor wires on the angled deck, rather than the catapult-assisted launch used by United States supercarriers. The air wing is designed to operate up to 30 aircraft, including MiG-29K fighters, Kamov Ka-31 airborne early-warning helicopters, MH-60R Seahawks, and indigenous Advanced Light Helicopters. The ship integrates an Israeli-Russian Barak-8 surface-to-air missile system and a combat-management system, and its construction achieved an indigenous content estimated at roughly 76 percent, drawing on warship-grade DMR-249 steel produced by the Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory.

The IAC-1 programme proceeded through three contractual phases, with cost escalating from an initial sanction near ₹3,261 crore to a final figure exceeding ₹20,000 crore. The ship was floated out of its dry dock in December 2011, undertook basin trials in 2020, and completed four phases of sea trials between August 2021 and July 2022 before delivery. At commissioning, the Navy also unveiled a new ensign replacing the colonial-era St George's Cross with a design drawn from the seal of Chhatrapati Shivaji, signalling the ceremony's broader symbolic register. The flight-deck certification for MiG-29K operations and the qualification of the indigenous Twin-Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF), under development by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and the Aeronautical Development Agency, remain ongoing milestones for full operational capability.

India now operates two carriers: INS Vikrant and INS Vikramaditya, a refitted Soviet-era Kiev-class vessel (formerly Admiral Gorshkov) commissioned in 2013. This two-carrier posture allows the Navy to sustain operational availability across both the western and eastern seaboards, with the carriers attached to the Western and Eastern Naval Commands at Karwar and Visakhapatnam respectively. The Navy has long advocated a third carrier, IAC-2, provisionally named INS Vishal and originally conceived as a larger CATOBAR vessel; as of the mid-2020s this proposal remained under deliberation by the Ministry of Defence, with discussion centred on whether to build a repeat Vikrant-class hull or a more ambitious design.

INS Vikrant must be distinguished from the INS Vikramaditya, which India purchased and refitted rather than building domestically, and from the original 1961 Vikrant, which was foreign-built. It should also not be conflated with a nuclear-powered ship: Vikrant is conventionally powered by gas turbines, unlike the nuclear submarines of the INS Arihant class developed under the Advanced Technology Vessel programme. The STOBAR carrier is further distinct from the amphibious assault ships and Landing Platform Docks the Navy operates, which lack fixed-wing fighter capability. In UPSC and defence-policy framing, Vikrant is the touchstone for indigenous shipbuilding capacity, paired conceptually with the Mazagon Dock-built Project 15B destroyers and Project 17A frigates.

Controversies surrounding the programme centred on prolonged delays and cost overruns, raised in successive Comptroller and Auditor General and parliamentary standing committee reports, and on India's continued dependence on imported aircraft, engines, and key sensors despite the high domestic content of the hull. The absence of a fully indigenous deck-based fighter at commissioning meant the carrier initially relied on Russian MiG-29Ks with known serviceability concerns, prompting a 2023 tender evaluation between the French Rafale-M and the American F/A-18 Super Hornet, which India resolved in 2025 in favour of the Rafale Marine. Debates over the strategic utility of large carriers against a backdrop of anti-access/area-denial missiles also feature in Indian defence discourse, particularly regarding Chinese carrier expansion in the Indian Ocean Region.

For the working practitioner, INS Vikrant functions as both a strategic asset and a policy signpost. It anchors India's claim to blue-water naval status and its bid for net-security-provider influence across the Indian Ocean, where it counterbalances the People's Liberation Army Navy's growing carrier fleet. For desk officers and analysts tracking the Indo-Pacific, the carrier is a measurable indicator of indigenous defence-industrial maturation, of the trajectory of QUAD-aligned maritime cooperation, and of India's procurement choices between Western and Russian platforms. Its commissioning is routinely cited in examinations and briefings as the concrete embodiment of self-reliance in high-end military manufacturing.