Viraat to be back in action in a week

The ‘mother’ will be back in action soon. With power projection being the name of the game, India is

finally ready to once again deploy its solitary aircraft carrier INS Viraat on the high seas after an almost two-year gap.

INS Viraat is now on the verge of completing its ‘sea-acceptance trials’ and ‘work-up phase’ off Mumbai after an 18-month-long comprehensive refit in Mumbai and Kochi to increase its longevity as well as upgrade its weapon and sensor packages.

Coincidentally enough, the 28,000-tonne old warhorse will also be completing its 50th year as an operational warship this November. Originally commissioned in the British Royal Navy as HMS Hermes in November 1959, it was inducted into the Indian Navy in May 1987.

‘‘Even British officers, who have served on her, are stunned we have managed to prolong its operational life so much. After this refit, it will serve us for at least five years more. It should be ‘full-ops’ in a week or so,’’ said a senior officer.

While Navy is justifiably proud of getting INS Viraat back in action, it’s a telling comment on the Indian defence establishment’s utter lack of long-term strategic planning to build military capabilities in tune with the country’s geopolitical objectives. An aircraft carrier prowling on the high seas, with its accompanying fighter jets tearing into the skies from the mobile airstrip, after all, projects power like nothing else.

US, on its part, has 11 carrier strike groups deployed across the globe to rule the seas. China, in turn, is actively scrambling to get carriers of its own in keeping with its big superpower aspirations. Successive Indian governments, however, been quite apathetic to Navy’s quest to have three aircraft carriers — one each for the eastern and western seaboards, while the third undergoes repairs — to protect the country’s ‘primary area of geopolitical interest’ stretching from Hormuz Strait to Malacca Strait.

The long-delayed 40,000-tonne indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) being built at Cochin Shipyard, for one, will be ready only by 2015. For another, India will get the refurbished 44,570-tonne Admiral Gorshkov, undergoing a refit at the Sevmash Shipyard in North Russia, only by early-2013 now. India and Russia, of course, are still bitterly negotiating Gorshkov’s final refit cost, with the price likely to settle upwards of $ 2.5-billion. There is another big worry for Navy. INS Viraat may be all set to resume duties but it’s left with only 11 Sea Harrier jump-jets to operate from its deck.

From 1983 onwards, Navy had inducted 30 of the British-origin Sea Harriers, which take off from the angled ski-jump on INS Viraat and land vertically on its deck, but has l

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