Kochi to Bokaro, Kolkata to Pune: An all-India effort – The Indian Express

On Friday, almost 500 years later, and not far from the Saint Francis Church where da Gama remained buried for 14 years before being returned to Portugal, Kochi was witness to another course-altering India maritime event — the country’s first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC), built by the Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL), was commissioned into the Indian Navy as INS Vikrant.

From the drawing board days in the Navy’s Warship Design Bureau — the erstwhile Directorate of Naval Design — in the early 2000s to its commissioning in 2022, the story of INS Vikrant is the story of an all-India effort. A story of industrial manufacturing entities of various sizes, scales and purposes, from the length and breadth of India, contributing to its construction steered by the CSL.

The design and construction of the IAC was formally sanctioned by the government in January 2003 and the keel was laid in February 2009.

CSL Director (Operations) Sreejith K Narayanan said, “The 13-year-long journey has been satisfying and, at the same time, challenging. This was the first ever warship that we started building… One of the initial challenges was the design. The ship was earlier envisaged as an air defence ship. But with changing requirements of the Navy and the nation’s aspiration, it was decided to build an aircraft carrier.”

“Between 2007 and 2009, we felt a severe shortage of steel, which was slated to come from Russia. We decided to produce the steel indigenously. The Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Steel Authority of India Ltd together designed warship-grade steel. It is now being used for all the warships built in India — one of the key spin-offs of this project which has enabled the country to become self-sufficient with respect to warship-grade steel,” he said.

“As it gets commissioned now, INS Vikrant has been under construction for the last 13 years. So the maintenance of the machinery and equipment that were installed over these years is a big challenge. But along with challenges, the journey was filled with satisfying triumphs, like achieving full speed in the maiden sea sortie.”

“It was also a journey of Atma Nirbharta. CSL played the role of an aggregator, dealing with 550 different companies across India — with those many different work cultures. It has also been a story that celebrates Indian ingenuity and innovation while facing challenges. The creative ideas that fit our ecosystem and the collaborative effort from a pan-India workforce make the journey of Vikrant truly Indian,” Narayanan said.

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Officials said that not just the companies that contributed to the project, but also the workforce at CSL was a pan-India workforce.

The Navy said the steel came from SAIL’s plants in Rourkela in Odisha, Bokaro in Jharkhand and Bhilai in Chhattisgarh. The main switch board, steering gear and water-tight hatches have been manufactured by Larsen & Toubro at its plants in Mumbai and Talegaon in Pune. The high capacity air conditioning and refrigeration systems have been manufactured at the Kirloskar Group’s plants in Pune. A large number of pumps have been supplied by Best & Crompton, Chennai.

The Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is supplying the Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS). The massive gearbox is supplied by Elecon in Gujarat. Electrical cables,  hundreds of kilometres long, have been mainly supplied by the Nicco Group in Kolkata. The ship’s anchor chain cable has been manufactured in Kolkata.

The project has around 76 per cent indegenous content from some of the major industrial houses in the country and many Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

Indigenisation efforts for INS Vikrant have resulted in development of several ancillary industries, besides generation of employment opportunities for around 2,000 CSL personnel and an estimated 13,000 employees in ancillary industries.

The carrier has been built at an approximate cost of Rs 20,000 crore – the Navy said that 80-85 per cent has been ploughed back into the Indian economy.

The 262.5 m long and 61.6 m wide INS Vikrant displaces approximately 43,000 tonnes, has a maximum speed of 28 knots with endurance of 7,500 nautical miles. The ship has around 2,200 compartments, designed for a crew of around 1,600 including women officers and sailors.

The successful commissioning of INS Vikrant puts India in the elite group of nations which are capable of designing and constructing aircraft carriers – the others being the US, Russia, UK, France and China.

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When fully operational — that is expected to be towards the end of 2023 — INS Vikrant will be capable of operating an air wing of 30 aircraft of Russian and US origin. Its air fleet will comprise multirole carrier-capable MiG-29Ks, airborne early warning Kamov-31 helicopters, MH-60R multirole helicopters, in addition to the indigenously manufactured Advanced Light Helicopters (ALHs) and the Naval version of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).

Using a novel aircraft-operation mode known as Short Take Off But Arrested Recovery (STOBAR), INS Vikrant is equipped with a ski-jump for launching aircraft, and a set of three ‘arrester wires’ for their recovery.