INS Vikrant, The Engineering Marvel

True to its name and crest, indigenously designed, developed, and built INS Vikrant is pure floating firepower on a literally floating city.

Vikrant means “victorious” and “gallant” and its previous avatar played a cavalier role in the 1971 war, helping onboard fighters bomb Pakistani targets in Cox Bazar and elsewhere to gain the epithet in the battle. These maritime exploits together with the daredevilry of two other forces – the Army and the Airforce – during the war saw the birth of Bangladesh.

The original INS Vikrant was physically laid to rest on January 31, 1997, but its rich legacy brought an air carrier with the same name back on water twenty-five years hence. It was commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. 

Besides the stealth that the warship has been equipped with is an engineering marvel that the Navy Design Bureau and manufacturer Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) and other domain experts have produced since the steel cutting which took place on April 11, 2005, to raise the basic hull structure.

Features

The building of the vessel – 262-metres long and 62-metres wide – that displaces about 43,000 tonnes when fully loaded and has a maximum designed speed of 28 Knots with the endurance of 7500 NM is also a story of struggle and challenges.

The first of many critical challenges emerged when Russia backed out to give special grade steel for production, Suresh Babu NV, who was earlier Director (Operations) but became Advisor to CMD Madhu S Nair post-retirement last year, told BusinessLine.

“That actually became out as a blessing in disguise as it forced the DRDO to indigenously develop special grade steel and Steel Authority of India manufactured 25,000 tonnes, saving to the cost of the aircraft carrier whose actual cost is said to be less than $3.5 billion. Of that 21,000 tonnes were exhausted in vessel making, he elaborated.

But for the 76 per cent indigenous component, the cost would have been $5.5 billion, Babu narrates to list out achievements under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat scheme.

2,200 compartments

The INS Vikrant, which has around 2,200 compartments designed for a crew of around 1,600 including specialised cabins to accommodate women officers and sailors – was constructed through trial and error and it did not have one complete design. Many of its shapes evolved as demands from the Navy and others kept pouring at the drawing and making stage.

Even expertise for welding the specialised steel having extra strength was not available in the country. “For joining the plate required special electorade which was later produced by a PSU Mithani. This was not enough since it required 36 special welding processes and for that, the CSL had to train people to do that mammoth exercise,” Babu explained.  

Big challenge

Another big challenge came when at the time of launching the vessel, demand for ski-jumping for fighter jets was introduced, the Advisor pointed out. The difficult proposition was that to lay it on the deck would have amounted to adding another 370 tonnes weight on the structure. “To accommodate it, our engineers and naval academics made out a plan to add two pontoons on both sides of the body to get floatation for the Vikrant,” Babu recalled. 

The painstaking effort of thousands of people involved in the process has transformed India from buyers of warships to builders of warships. 

Now, the next aircraft carrier which the Navy needs to augment its fleet to three can be built in seven to eight years, the time taken by a few nations like the US and China that have such construction capacity, Babu insists.