INS Vikramaditya: What India Learned Before Building Its Next Aircraft Carrier

INS Vikramaditya highlighted the risks of relying on imported platforms. On the afternoon of 25 February 2026, the closing ceremony of Exercise MILAN was held on a flight deck off Visakhapatnam. Forty-two ships and submarines had taken part, 29 aircraft, delegations from dozens of navies. The deck belonged to INS Vikrant, built at Cochin Shipyard. Also in the water that week, part of the same show of force, was INS Vikramaditya — the carrier India did not build.

That pairing is where any honest argument about India’s carrier future has to start. INS Vikramaditya is not a museum piece and it is not a wreck. It sailed in the twin-carrier posture the Navy threw into the northern Arabian Sea during Operation Sindoor. It still flies fighters. And it has also been, by almost any accounting standard you care to apply, the most expensive procurement lesson the Indian Navy has ever paid for.

1. Why INS Vikramaditya Was Never Really Free

The 2004 offer looked like the kind of thing that only lands on a defence ministry’s desk once. Russia would hand over Admiral Gorshkov — a Kiev-class ship that had been laid down as Baku in the 1980s, decommissioned in 1996, and was rusting at a pier Moscow could no longer afford to maintain — for nothing. India would pay only for the refit.

The refit was pencilled in at roughly $974 million. Another billion or so was earmarked for the air wing and combat systems. On a spreadsheet in 2004, that arithmetic looked like a bargain against the cost of a new-build carrier, and the Navy was staring at a genuine problem: Viraat was ageing, the first Vikrant was long gone, and India’s own carrier programme existed mostly as drawings.

What the spreadsheet could not price was leverage. Once steel is cut and money is sunk into a hull sitting in a foreign yard, the buyer’s negotiating position collapses. Sevmash had never converted a carrier before. India had no realistic exit.

2. INS Vikramaditya’s $2.35 Billion Cost Overrun

Handover was supposed to happen in 2008. It happened in 2013. Somewhere in those five years the number stopped being $974 million and became $2.35 billion, with Moscow asking for the balance up front. New Delhi paid, because the alternative was writing off everything already spent on a ship it did not own outright.

Then came the delivery voyage. Propulsion trouble on the transit home, boilers that did not behave, and a Russian explanation that pointed at Chinese-supplied components — a claim Beijing rejected flatly. Whether or not that explanation held up, the diagnostic problem was the point: India was a customer being told what had gone wrong inside its own warship, with no independent way to verify it.

That is the part of the Vikramaditya story that gets flattened in the retelling. The cost overrun was painful. The information asymmetry was structural. The experience of INS Vikramaditya influenced India’s indigenous carrier programme.

3. INS Vikramaditya’s Major Accidents and Technical Problems

Since commissioning in November 2013, the carrier has accumulated a record that would be treated as a scandal on a civilian vessel:

• June 2016 — a toxic gas leak during maintenance at Karwar killed two personnel.
• February 2017 — hydraulic failure forced a MiG-29K into an emergency landing at Mangalore.
• April 2019 — a boiler room fire killed one officer and injured seven.
• November 2020 — a MiG-29KUB trainer went into the Arabian Sea; Commander Nishant Singh did not survive.
• July 2022 — another fire, this time during sea trials off Karwar.

Every navy that operates carriers has an accident list. Fires happen on American and French decks too. What is harder to argue away is the pattern underneath — legacy Soviet-era boiler and propulsion architecture on a hull that was already a quarter-century old when India took delivery, maintained by a service that did not design it.

4. The MiG-29K Problem Is Bigger Than One Ship

India spent over ₹10,000 crore on 45 MiG-29K and KUB fighters, ordered across 2004 and 2010 as part of the wider carrier package. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s 2016 audit is still the most damaging document in the file, and it is worth quoting accurately rather than roughly.

The CAG found the aircraft riddled with problems across the airframe, the RD-33MK engine and the fly-by-wire system. Serviceability of the single-seat MiG-29K ranged between 15.93% and 37.63%. The twin-seat KUB trainer did better, between 21.30% and 47.14%. Of 65 engines accepted as of September 2014, 40 — 62% — had been withdrawn or rejected over design-related defects since induction in 2010. There had been at least ten single-engine landings. The auditor also warned that the defects would erode the type’s 6,000-hour, 25-year service life.

The Navy has pushed back on the worst of it, and by late 2018 was claiming serviceability closer to 70%. Five of the fighters have been lost in crashes since 2018 all the same.

Here is the detail that complicates the neat version of this argument: the MiG-29K is not a Vikramaditya problem. It is the air wing on INS Vikrant as well. India’s indigenously built carrier flies imported jets with an imported reliability record. A carrier is a runway; what determines whether it matters in a crisis is what parks on it.

5. What INS Vikrant Proves — and What It Doesn’t

Vikrant’s operational run has been genuinely impressive. On 3 March 2026 the ship announced 1,000 arrested landings — traps, in the trade — without a mishap, roughly 41 months after induction. It hosted MILAN 2026. It anchored the Navy’s forward posture in the Arabian Sea during Operation Sindoor, and did enough to keep the Pakistan Navy inside harbour.

But the tidy contrast — imported ship bad, home-built ship good — does not survive a look at Vikrant’s own construction file. The project ran roughly twelve years past its original schedule. Costs rose from an initial sanction in the region of ₹3,200 crore to ₹19,341 crore approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security in 2014, and about ₹20,000 crore by delivery. The CAG noted that the Navy and Cochin Shipyard could not even agree on delivery dates, and that neither the ministry nor the yard had a reliable way to assess how far along the ship actually was.

And the aviation facility complex — the equipment that makes a carrier a carrier rather than a very large ship with a flat top — was designed by Russia’s Nevskoye Design Bureau. Delays in receiving 18 categories of that equipment were a direct cause of the slippage. About 76% of Vikrant is indigenous by float content. The fight and move content is a different story: the four LM2500 gas turbines are General Electric, and a large share of the sensors, weapons and combat management value sits outside India.

So the case for indigenous construction is not that home-built ships arrive on time and on budget. India’s own evidence says otherwise.

6. The Rafale-M Order Is Also an Import

In April 2025 India signed an inter-governmental agreement with France for 26 Rafale Marine fighters, worth roughly ₹63,000–64,000 crore — 22 single-seaters and four twin-seat trainers that cannot operate off a deck. Deliveries start around 2028 and run to 2030, possibly 2031. The jets are intended primarily for Vikrant, and the airframes reportedly need wingtip modification to fit elevators sized for the MiG-29K.

It is a capable aircraft and the deal carries useful sweeteners — a fuselage production facility in India, an MRO hub for engines and sensors, technology transfer clauses covering integration of Indian missiles. It is also, unambiguously, another foreign purchase to cover a gap the domestic ecosystem could not fill in time. Maintenance lessons from INS Vikramaditya continue to shape IAC-2 planning.

The indigenous answer is the Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter. ADA has frozen the design. It is still waiting on CCS approval. Optimistic voices inside the programme talk about a first flight five years after clearance and induction eight years after that; ADA’s own revised projections have pointed as far out as 2038. Either way, India will be flying French and Russian jets off its decks well into the 2030s.

7. China Bought a Second-Hand Hull Too. Look What It Did With It.

The comparison that should worry Indian planners is not with Russia. It is with the country that made the same second-hand purchase and drew a different conclusion from it.

China bought the incomplete Varyag from Ukraine in 1998, finished it domestically, and commissioned it as Liaoning in 2012 — openly treating it as a training platform rather than a front-line asset. Shandong, the first fully domestic hull, followed in 2019. Fujian, 80,000-plus tonnes with electromagnetic catapults, was commissioned at Sanya on 5 November 2025. A fourth ship is under construction at Dalian, and the Pentagon’s 2025 assessment reads that Beijing is aiming for nine carriers by 2035.

Zero carriers to three in thirteen years, with the industrial base to keep going. India bought its second-hand hull and treated it as a flagship. China bought its second-hand hull and treated it as a curriculum. That distinction matters more than the purchase itself.

IAC-2 Has Quietly Shrunk

If your mental picture of India’s next carrier is INS Vishal — 65,000 tonnes, catapults, possibly nuclear — it is out of date. That design has been effectively parked.

What is being finalised instead is closer to an enhanced repeat of Vikrant: around 45,000 tonnes, STOBAR retained, upgraded aviation facilities and mission systems, a deck layout built with drone operations in mind. The figure being reported is roughly ₹40,000 crore, and Cochin Shipyard has indicated a repeat order could be delivered in about eight years. Sticking with a ski-jump sidesteps the cost and technical risk of developing EMALS.

The strategic framing has shifted too. In early 2025 it was reported that the three-carrier plan had been shelved, with the government preferring submarines and IAC-2 recast as a replacement for Vikramaditya rather than an addition to it. That is a meaningful downgrade of ambition, and it happened with very little public argument.

The sceptics are not fools, incidentally. General Bipin Rawat called carriers sitting ducks. The Air Force has argued land-based airpower is cheaper per unit of effect. A2/AD systems, long-range anti-ship missiles and cheap drones have made large surface platforms harder to operate. The Navy’s own fleet target has come down from 200 ships to 175 by 2035 because the money is not there. Any serious case for a third hull has to answer those points rather than wave at them.

What “Build It at Home” Should Actually Mean

The absolutist version of this argument — build everything domestically or build nothing — does not survive five minutes of contact with how warships are actually made. Vikrant runs on American turbines. France builds Charles de Gaulle with American catapults and E-2 Hawkeyes. Nobody is autarkic.

The defensible version is narrower and harder to argue against:

1. Design authority stays in India. Whoever holds the drawings controls what the ship can become over 40 years of upgrades. Warship Design Bureau ownership of the Vikrant hull form is why a repeat order is even possible.
2. Sustainment happens in Indian yards. The November 2024 short refit and dry docking contract for Vikramaditya went to Cochin Shipyard at ₹1,207.5 crore, involving around 50 MSMEs and 3,500-plus workers — a Russian-built carrier now maintained on Indian docks. That is the model, and it should have arrived a decade sooner.
3. Import subsystems, never import dependency. Buying LM2500s is fine. Buying an aviation complex you cannot troubleshoot without a foreign design bureau is not.
4. Protect the industrial line. Vikrant involved roughly 550 Indian companies, about 100 of them MSMEs, some 2,000 shipyard staff and around 12,000 jobs in ancillary industry. Let that capability idle between hulls and the next carrier restarts a learning curve India has already paid to climb.

None of this is an argument that Vikramaditya was a mistake in the sense of being pointless. It kept India in the carrier business through a decade when the alternative was no fixed-wing airpower at sea at all. It bought the Navy time. The failure was in what the country did with that time.

The Real Deadline Is Vikramaditya’s Exit

The carrier faces a structural assessment somewhere around 2035 and could leave service by the late 2030s. If IAC-2 clearance keeps slipping and construction takes eight years from a start that has not yet happened, India spends part of the next decade with one operational carrier and a rule-of-thirds problem that no amount of crew endurance solves. One hull in refit means one hull at sea and nothing in reserve.

Meanwhile Fujian is working up, a fourth Chinese carrier is taking shape at Dalian, and Chinese warships are appearing in the Indian Ocean with a frequency that used to be remarkable and no longer is.

The file on IAC-2 sits somewhere between the Navy and the Cabinet Committee on Security. TEDBF sits in the same queue. Both have been described as close to approval for several years running, which is its own kind of answer about how these decisions get made.

FAQs

Why was INS Vikramaditya so expensive if Russia gave the ship for free?

The hull was free; the conversion was not. The refit at Sevmash was initially estimated at about $974 million and eventually cost $2.35 billion, with a further outlay of roughly a billion dollars on the air wing and combat systems. Once India had sunk money into a ship sitting in a Russian yard, it had almost no leverage to renegotiate.

Is INS Vikramaditya still operational in 2026?

Yes. It completed a short refit and dry docking at Cochin Shipyard under a ₹1,207.5 crore contract signed in November 2024, and it took part in the Navy’s February 2026 events at Visakhapatnam. It is expected to face a structural assessment around 2035.

What exactly did the CAG say about the MiG-29K?

The 2016 audit reported problems across the airframe, the RD-33MK engine and the fly-by-wire system. Serviceability of the MiG-29K ranged from 15.93% to 37.63%, and of the MiG-29KUB from 21.30% to 47.14%. Forty of 65 engines accepted by September 2014 had been withdrawn or rejected over design defects, and there had been at least ten single-engine landings.

Will the Rafale-M replace the MiG-29K?

Not entirely, and not soon. The 26 aircraft ordered in April 2025 are intended mainly for INS Vikrant, with deliveries running from around 2028 to 2030 or 2031. Twenty-two are carrier-capable; four twin-seat trainers are shore-based. The MiG-29K fleet remains in service alongside them.

Is INS Vishal still happening?

The 65,000-tonne CATOBAR concept has been paused. Current reporting indicates IAC-2 will be an enhanced repeat of Vikrant — about 45,000 tonnes, STOBAR, roughly ₹40,000 crore, with Cochin Shipyard suggesting an eight-year build once cleared.

How many aircraft carriers does China have compared with India?

China has three in service — Liaoning (2012), Shandong (2019) and Fujian (November 2025) — with a fourth under construction at Dalian and a reported target of nine by 2035. India has two: Vikramaditya and Vikrant.

When will India get an indigenous carrier fighter?

The TEDBF programme has a frozen design but is still awaiting Cabinet Committee on Security approval. Projections range from induction in the early 2030s under optimistic assumptions to around 2038 in ADA’s revised timeline.

External Authority Links

CAG Report No. 17 of 2016 (Union Defence Services — Navy and Coast Guard) — https://cag.gov.in/webroot/uploads/download_audit_report/2016/Union_Defence_Services_Navy_and_Coast_Guard_Report_No_17_of_2016.pdf (primary source for MiG-29K and IAC-1 audit findings — use in Section 4)

PIB — MILAN 2026 concludes onboard INS Vikrant — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2232853 (intro paragraph)

PIB — ₹1,207 crore refit contract for INS Vikramaditya with Cochin Shipyard — https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2079380 (sustainment section)

Naval News — India orders 26 Rafale Marine aircraft — https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/04/india-orders-26-rafale-marine-carrier-based-aircraft-for-7-5-billion/ (Section 6)

USNI News — China commissions third aircraft carrier Fujian — https://news.usni.org/2025/11/07/china-comissions-3rd-aircraft-carrier-fujian (Section 7)

CSIS Hidden Reach — Tracking China’s fourth aircraft carrier — https://features.csis.org/hiddenreach/china-fourth-carrier/ (Section 7 and closing)

Business Standard — India shelves three-carrier plan — https://www.business-standard.com/external-affairs-defence-security/news/india-decides-it-will-not-operate-a-third-aircraft-carrier-here-is-why-125020400853_1.html (IAC-2 section)