Who, if not the Americans, can judge foreign aircraft carriers? Indeed, they are experts in this type of ships the best in the world.
Kyle Mizokami of our beloved The National Interest has given a very interesting picture of Indian aircraft carrier ambitions. Kyle is generally a very good specialist, with humor, therefore it is always interesting to read him. Not everything can be agreed, so we will correct Kyle on occasion. Italicized.
Like many other countries, India wants the best weapons it can afford. But ideological and financial concerns mean there are many things she won't buy in the United States or Europe. This is largely indicative of Russia.
India has been a major buyer of Russian weapons for 50 years. These were not easy years for New Delhi. India's defense contracts with Russia have repeatedly suffered delays and cost overruns. And the equipment received doesn't always work.
Of all India's troubles with Russian purchases, none speaks more of the dysfunctional relations between the two countries than the saga of the Vikramaditya aircraft carrier.
In the early 2000s, India went to market for a new aircraft carrier. The Indian military wanted a new ship to replace the old Viraat, and no one was going to create a military-industrial nightmare. It happened.
But it all started a little earlier.
In 1988, the Soviet Union commissioned the aircraft carrier "Baku". These ships were a masterpiece of Soviet design. The forward third resembled a heavy cruiser with 12 giant SS-N-12 anti-ship missiles, up to 192 surface-to-air missiles and two 100mm deck guns. The remaining two-thirds of the ship was an aircraft carrier with an inclined flight deck and hangar.
Baku served briefly in the Soviet navy until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Russia inherited the ship, renamed it Admiral Gorshkov and kept it on the lists of the new Russian fleet until 1996. After the boilers exploded, probably due to lack of maintenance, "Admiral Gorshkov" went into naphthalene.
In the early 2000s, India faced a dilemma. The only aircraft carrier in the Indian fleet, Viraat, was due to retire in 2007.
Aircraft carriers are helping India assert its influence in the Indian Ocean, not to mention being status symbols. New Delhi needed to replace Viraat, and quickly.
India's options were limited. The only countries building aircraft carriers at the time, the United States, France and Italy, built ships too large for an Indian checkbook. In 2004, India and Russia struck a deal for India to receive Admiral Gorshkov. India will pay Russia $ 974 million for its modernization in excess of the sale amount.
Russia was to turn the ship into a working aircraft carrier with a launch ramp and flight deck just over 900 feet long, with an air group of 24 MiG-29K fighters and up to 10 Kamov helicopters.
The ship, according to the agreement, will be replaced with new radars, boilers, aerofinishers and deck lifts. All 2,700 rooms and compartments located on 22 decks will be renovated and new wiring will be installed throughout the ship. The "new" carrier will be named "Vikramaditya" - in honor of the ancient Indian king.
"A real aircraft carrier for less than a billion dollars" sounds too good to be true. And so it turned out.
In 2007, just a year before delivery, it became clear that the Russian Sevmash plant would not be able to meet the agreed deadlines. What's more, the plant required more than double the money, $ 2.9 billion in total, to complete the job.
The cost of sea trials alone, which originally stood at $ 27 million, has grown to a fantastic $ 550 million.
A year later, when the project was not yet completed, and the aircraft carrier's readiness was estimated at only 49 percent, one of the leaders of Sevmash offered India to pay an additional $ 2 billion, citing the "market price of the" new aircraft carrier "in the range of $ 3 to 4 billion ".
Sevmash specialized in the construction of submarines and had never worked on an aircraft carrier before. The ship was originally built at the Nikolaev shipyards, which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, became part of Ukraine. The rigging and specialized equipment on which the Admiral Gorshkov was built were thousands of kilometers away, and now in a foreign country.
After fulfilling half of the terms of the deal and losing $ 974 million, India could not afford to abandon the deal. Russia knew this and was straightforward about the options for India. "If India does not pay, we will keep the aircraft carrier," a Defense Ministry official told RIA Novosti.
By 2009, the project had reached a dead end. Russian arms exports in 2009 totaled only $ 8 billion, and Sevmash's delays and extortionary tactics did not benefit the Russian defense industry as a whole.
In July 2009, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a high-profile visit to the Sevmash plant. The Indian news reported that the carrier was still half ready, which meant that the shipyard did not actually do any work on the ship for two years as it was holding onto a lot of money.
Medvedev publicly scolded Sevmash officials. “You need to complete Vikramaditya and hand it over to our partners,” the clearly annoyed president told Sevmash General Director Nikolai Kalistratov.
In 2010, the Indian government agreed to more than double the aircraft carrier's budget to $ 2.2 billion. This was less than Sevmash needed ($ 2.9 billion), and much less than the $ 4 billion "market price" offered by Sevmash.
Suddenly Sevmash magically began to work harder, in fact twice as hard, and completed the second half of the upgrade in just three years. Vikramaditya finally went to sea trials in August 2012 and was commissioned by the Indian Navy in November 2013.
At the commissioning ceremony, Indian Defense Minister Anthony expressed relief that the test was over, telling the press that there was a time "when we thought we would never get it."
Now that Vikramaditya is finally in service, India's troubles are over, right?
In no case. Incredibly, India chose Sevmash to carry out non-warranty work on the ship for the next 20 years.
Providing spare parts for Vikramaditya is an important task in itself. Ten Indian contractors helped complete the aircraft carrier, but also more than 200 other contractors in Russia, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Finland, France, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Some countries, such as Japan, most likely did not even know that they were exporting parts for a foreign weapon system.
The ship's boilers, which provide power and propulsion to the Vikramaditya, are a long-term problem. All eight boilers are new. But Indian sailors found defects in them. During a trip from Russia to India, a boiler broke down on the ship.
Finally, Vikramaditya lacks active air defense. The ship has anti-ship missile systems and medium-range anti-aircraft missiles, but no melee systems.
India could install local versions of the Russian AK-630 cannon system, but the Vikramaditya will have to rely on the new Indian air defense destroyer Kolkata to defend against aircraft and missiles.
And what about Sevmash? After the Vikramaditya fiasco, the plant is oddly optimistic about building new aircraft carriers and has identified Brazil as a potential buyer. Sevmash wants to build aircraft carriers, said Sergey Novoselov, deputy director general of the plant.
Epilogue.
India ended up with its own light aircraft carrier, an aircraft carrier, not an aircraft-carrying cruiser. For quite good money, we got rid of the ship, for the restoration of which we still did not have the means. Of course, it would be nice to spend the received dollars on the redemption and restoration of "Riga" / "Varyag", which cost China $ 30 million, but …
But history does not know the subjunctive moods.
Kyle Mizokami wrote a pretty objective story. And the essence of this story is clear and understandable: India had not to fool around with the old Soviet cruiser, but to take out a loan and purchase a ship from the United States. How the Indians bought their first aircraft carrier from Great Britain.
However, this case can be quite rightly regarded as an economic example. When you really want an aircraft carrier, but there is no money for it, American ships are … somewhat expensive. Especially for India.
No matter how perfection the American aircraft carriers are (sarcasm), the examples of China and India have shown that it is not worth spending as much money on a floating airfield as the Americans spend.
You can suffer with such strange partners as the Russians, but as a result you can get at your disposal a ship capable of performing the tasks assigned to it.
For absolutely real amounts.
A very instructive story. Especially from the pen of an American.
For those who like to read the original source:
India's Biggest Military Mistake: Buying a Russian Aircraft Carrier.
