File photo of INS Viraat. (Agence France-Presse)
INS Viraat, perhaps one of the longest serving warships in the world, will be decommissioned next year, after 57 years in service.
INS Viraat has gone through five refits and mid-life upgrades since 1987. Yet another major refit and upgrade to extend its life will not be "cost effective" and hence it has been decided to decommission the ship, a senior Ministry of Defence official told NDTV.
The British-built aircraft carrier was commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1957. It was inducted into the Indian Navy in 1987. Between 1987 and 1995, the warship served alongside INS Vikrant - India's first aircraft carrier which is now in a junkyard after efforts to keep it afloat as a museum failed.
For at least two years - from 2016 to 2018 - the Indian Navy will have to depend only on the 44,000 ton refurbished Russian Admiral Gorshkov, which has been rechristened INS Vikramaditya and the MiG-29K that fly of its deck to project power in the Indian Ocean Region.
The first indigenously built aircraft carrier that will be named INS Vikrant is expected to join the Indian Navy only in 2018-19. It is being built at the Cochin Shipyard. The warship was scheduled to join the Navy by 2012 but has been delayed. One of the key reasons being procuring warship grade specialised steel. After failing to procure it globally, Steel Authority of India - a Public Sector Unit - came to the Navy's rescue.
The construction of INS Vikrant started in 2008. "We expect INS Vikrant to go for trials by end of 2016. First the ships will be tested after which it will be aviation complex that will undergo tests," a senior Naval officer told NDTV.
Meanwhile, India's neighbour China, after inducting its first 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier Liaoning in September 2012, has started constructing a second one. And it plans to build two more to bolster its expanding maritime power. Aircraft carriers, with their accompanying flotilla warships and aircraft, are considered to be the ultimate symbols of projection of power.