Indian Navy fired up engines of Indigenous Aircraft Carrier and is ready for basin trials.

The engines onboard the first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier being constructed at Kochi have been fired up and the Navy is starting on the next step of basin trials, with expectations that the warship would be ready for operations by 2022.

Indian Navy’s aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya (Picture source: Wikipedia)

The project which was to be completed by 2018, is now back on track, with senior officers saying that the 37,500-tonne aircraft carrier will initially operate MiG 29K fighters and could also feature indigenous combat aircraft.

The carrier, the largest ever warship being constructed in an Indian yard, is now in its final phase of construction and the Navy thinks about operating a limited number of the maritime version of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) once it gets ready for service.

The Basin trials precede sea trials and test a ship in the floating condition in calm waters. That will be followed with a series of Contract of Sea trials and ultimately culminate into delivery. The aircraft carrier is expected to be commissioned into the Indian Navy in 2021.

India’s first aircraft carrier was also called INS Vikrant which was decommissioned in 1997 after serving for over three decades. Currently, the Indian Navy has only one aircraft carrier – INS Vikramaditya.