At present, the Indian Navy has two aircraft carriers: the Vikramaditya, which was "donated" by Russia after modification, and the Vikrant, which was built by the country. However, the Indian Navy has been full of complaints about the Russian modified Vikramaditya aircraft carrier, and the carrier has been a lot of problems since its delivery to the Indian Navy, and the supporting Russian-made mig-29K carrier-based aircraft has also been broken down frequently, making the Indian Navy can only be used as a training ship, and does not have real combat capabilities. India's first aircraft carrier Vikrant, although it has now been delivered to the Indian Navy, the ship still has a lot of imperfections, in addition to allowing the Indian Navy to nominally have two aircraft carrier formations, but in fact, the ship may not be able to form combat effectiveness in the next few years.
However, the Indian Navy has not yet understood the two aircraft carriers in hand, and has to rush to start the construction of a second domestic aircraft carrier, the purpose is to want to have three aircraft carriers as soon as possible. It is also part of the Indian Navy's massive ship-building programme, spurred on by the Chinese navy, which already has around 370 ships and submarines and has extended its reach around the Indian Ocean. India plans to have 160 warships by 2030 and 175 by 2035 at an estimated cost of 2 trillion rupees (about $24 billion), according to Indian sources familiar with the matter. The Indian Navy currently has more than 60 ships in various stages of construction. Building another aircraft carrier so that the Indian Navy nominally has the same number of aircraft carriers as the Chinese Navy is the focus of the ship building program.
However, in the Indian Navy's "original" shipbuilding plan, after the first domestic aircraft carrier Vikrant, the construction of the second domestic aircraft carrier should be a nuclear-powered catapult aircraft carrier with a displacement of 65-80,000 tons, which will make the Indian Navy truly among the world's aircraft carrier powers. But the 13 years it has taken India to build its first indigenous aircraft carrier, the Vikrant (start in 2009, delivery in 2022), have made it clear to the Indian government that the country's industrial strength is far from building a medium-sized carrier on its own. And Vikrant is said to be the fastest until 2024 to initially have operational capabilities, and seeing the Chinese Navy's third Fujian 80,000 tons electromagnetic catapult carrier is about to enter service, so the Indian Navy had to revise its plan: temporarily shelve the construction of a very difficult medium-sized aircraft carrier, and continue to "copy" a Vikrant aircraft carrier.
In this way, the Indian Navy can use the "industrial chain", mature technology and large number of skilled workers established by Cochin Shipyard during the construction of the first Vikrant carrier, to build another Vikrant sister ship in a relatively short time. This will at least allow the Indian Navy to have the same number of aircraft carriers as the Chinese Navy, so that the quality gap with the Chinese Navy can be ignored. After all, only after having three aircraft carriers, the Indian Navy can maintain an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean patrol at any time in accordance with the allocation of "one maintenance, one training standby, one deployment" to maintain the containment capability of the Chinese navy.
