India's indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant boasts of many firsts
India's indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant boasts of many firsts
New Delhi: India launched its maiden indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier INS Vikrant on Friday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi commissioning the warship. With Vikrant’s induction, India has joined a select club of nations such as the US, the UK, Russia, China and France in having niche capability to indigenously design and build an aircraft carrier.
But there are several other facts, which make this aircraft carrier not only special but also the pride of the new Atmanirbhar Bharat.
India’s first indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier
About 90 per cent of the hull, 50 per cent of the machinery and 30 per cent of weapons and sensors of INS Vikrant are indigenously designed and built. It has been designed by Indian Navy’s in-house Warship Design Bureau (WDB) and built by Cochin Shipyard Limited, a public sector shipyard under the Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways. Vikrant has been built with state-of-the-art automation features and is the largest ship ever built in maritime history of India.
Cochin Shipyard’s largest warship ever built
The yard commenced the shipbuilding operations in 1978, ship repair in 1981, marine engineering training in 1993 and offshore upgradation in 1999. It has facilities to build vessels up to 1.1 lakh tons and repair vessels up to 1.25 lakh tons, the largest such facilities in India. The 262 m long and 62 m wide INS Vikrant displaces approximately 45,000 tons when fully loaded.
21,500 tonnes of special grade steel developed indigenously
According to the Centre, over 76 per cent of the material and equipment on board IAC-1 is indigenous, including “21,500 tonnes of special grade steel developed indigenously and used in Indian Naval Ships for the first time”.
According to the official release, major Indian industrial houses, including BEL, BHEL, GRSE, Keltron, Kirloskar, L&T, Wartsila India, and over 100 MSMEs, contributed to the development of indigenous equipment and machinery on board.
Job creation
According to a government statement, the indigenisation efforts resulted in the development of ancillary industries and the creation of employment opportunities for 2,000 CSL personnel and approximately 13,000 employees in ancillary industries, thereby bolstering the plough-back effect on the nation’s economy. The Navy previously stated that more than 50 Indian manufacturers were directly involved in the project and that approximately 2,000 Indians were directly employed on board IAC-1 daily. Over 40,000 people were indirectly employed.
Produced from 3D model
The Union Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways has said that CSL “carried out the detailed engineering of the ship using advanced software which enabled the designer to get a complete 3D view of the compartments of the ship”, representing the “first time in the country that a ship of the size of an aircraft carrier is completely modeled in 3D and production drawings extracted from the 3D model”, reports CNN-News18.
With input from agencies
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