Indian Navy contemplating CVN. Folly or Vision?

[StingrayOZ]

That ship was INS Shivalik, there are 3 vessels in this class. What I find interesting is that instead of building more Shivaliks they went back to Russia and ordered 3 additional Talwars, I believe a contract is close to being inked for another 3 Talwar's.

Doesn't make sense to me, but seems typical of the process. From what I could see the Shivaliks had a mix of russian and western weapon systems, seemed like a reasonable mix. The sort of ship, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam etc might be interested in, if it could be delivered for the right price.

The procurement process is very strange, especially now that bribes have been rulled out the procurement people ask for a non refundable performance bond up front, before you win the contract.

The system obviously isnt perfect. The problem is that with carriers, all your problems are bigger and multiplied. To drive cost down, availability up you really do want to try to production line/standard on things as much as possible.

The us is very good at this. The US navy consistently and sustain-ably pumps out top nuclear technicians, engineers and operators. Builds are scheduled to be viable and sustainable. Because of the common systems, there is a large pool of people to crew any ship and a career path. The fleet is designed to have so many CVN's available all the time. Costs are reduced, availability is up. There is a set path for waste handling, and fuel generation. They have the end to end systems in place and the volume to make it pretty cheap per unit. Still the total US total carrier program is a huge expenditure.

Having just one ship like India is planning seems to create a lot of headaches for very little/no gain. France has a huge nuclear industry and struggled with costs and the technical side. They have operated 10 carriers, built over half a dozen etc.

• The Vishal is some 25,000t heavier than Vikrant. Thats a significant variation between ships of the same type.
• It goes from STOBAR to CATOBAR. Again completely duplicating the whole carrier concept learning that needs to happen and further complicating carrier and aircraft design and choices.
• On top of that they want to go Emals
• Because of the difference between carriers, one will operate Mig29ks and the other looks to be most likely using Rafale M.
• It appears that Vikrant is now some 5 years behind schedule. Issues include an accident with a diesel generator, generator alignment, gearbox, etc.
• The hull was launched early because the dock couldn't work on a ship bigger than half the completed displacement of Vikrant.

Seems like some serious challenges right there. I would be instead thinking of a common design that can operate STOBAR and CATOBAR. At 40-65,000t it would seem to be doable. But it seems to be in the "one of every type" + "multiple supplier all the time" book.

 

[swerve]

Indian procurement is from what I have seen the worst procurement system in the world generally. The best example of this is their attempts to buy 155mm arty since 1982 without any success.

What is very concerning is how it is breaking the basic sustainment of vessels already in service with many examples of the basics being neglected by a broken procurement(old batteries not being replaced, missiles which are past their sell buy date being used because their are no replacement, lack of towed arrays on surface vessels and helicopters).

Common to all the services, from what's been published, e.g. aircraft grounded because nobody bothered to place orders for spares. In one case, it was reported that a foreign supplier had an agreed delivery schedule, but each payment by India needed to be approved - & the documents didn't get signed, so the payments weren't made, so the supplier stopped delivering.

Note that this wasn't deliberate delaying of payments, just bureaucratic inertia.

 

[StobieWan]

I've just had a look and yes indeed - the ex Russian kit is steam, the Vikrant is four LM2500's and the third carrier may be nuclear so that's a trio of unique ships in every sense, including their air group.

What a headache to support...

If I were in charge of the Navy, I'd be building two GT powered carriers of the same class with the intention of quietly retiring the ex-russian one fairly sharpish (ie, first boiler refit..) and job's a good 'un.

 

[Blackshoe]

.The us is very good at this. The US navy consistently and sustain-ably pumps out top nuclear technicians, engineers and operators. Builds are scheduled to be viable and sustainable. Because of the common systems, there is a large pool of people to crew any ship and a career path. The fleet is designed to have so many CVN's available all the time. Costs are reduced, availability is up. There is a set path for waste handling, and fuel generation. They have the end to end systems in place and the volume to make it pretty cheap per unit. Still the total US total carrier program is a huge expenditure.

The USN pays dearly for this capability, however; our need for nuclear-trainable personnel drives most of our other accession policies (at least for the Unrestricted Line Officer and enlisted elements). It's a steep burden. It has benefits in other areas, though, specifically for submarine construction.

There are ways to minimize this (the Russians found many of them through automation), and that's certainly an option (one I would expect the Indians to follow, if for no other reason than that's where they've acquired most of their operational nuclear experience from me). The question to me comes down to are people expensive for the Indian Navy or not. It's something I genuinely don't know.

I am convinced the Indians will most definitely pursue this to get the achievement prestige of building surface combatants (being the 4th country in the world to do so is quite an accomplishment), but I'm not sure they will find it worthwhile to do so for too long afterwards-there aren't a lot of tactical/operational benefits to them even if they do it right (I have my doubts on that).

Sort of like the South African nuclear weapons program, it seems like more of an excuse to do it than anything else.

 

[harryriedl]

I've just had a look and yes indeed - the ex Russian kit is steam, the Vikrant is four LM2500's and the third carrier may be nuclear so that's a trio of unique ships in every sense, including their air group.

What a headache to support...

If I were in charge of the Navy, I'd be building two GT powered carriers of the same class with the intention of quietly retiring the ex-russian one fairly sharpish (ie, first boiler refit..) and job's a good 'un.

this along with a UK WW2 vintage steam plant, US Amphib steam system which is an American system, plus it seems all the variety of fits from Indian steam turbines, to LM2500 and large variety of Russian GT, their is very little commonality between classes which must make it one of the most expensive fleets in regards to parts and general efficiency. an absolute nightmare a to support made worse by the bureaucracy

I regards to Vikrant I don't know as the competence of the project so far has been extremely suspect as the build seems slow and problematic for something that is relatively straightforward which is a larger CATOBAR Cavour(Also for something meant to be in service by 2018 I would have thought their would be more images certainly the QE's and Ford have had during their builds)

adding a Nuke carrier to support along with everything else is madness and a gigantic money pit in same way the Nuke Sub program has been(especially with the horror stories of the dreadful maintenance and poor CONOPS of the conventional submarines)

 

[kev 99]

CdG needed an extension of the flight deck to get the E2's on and off I believe, so that's suggesting they muffed up with some fundamentals. The reactor refuelling was something they'd have expected as they knew what the refuel life cycle was like for the sub fleet - I think it's just an outcome of the grade of fuel used.

I think going nuke powered would be a bit of a stretch for India given their industrial experience of nuclear engineering so far and it's possible that the economics of it all for one ship just don't make sense.

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure I read that E2 wasn't intended to be part of the airgroup when it was CdG designed.

Also I agree about a nuclear carrier being a step too far, it might make sense as a replacement to Vikramaditya though, be prepared to do it right, spend some time on it.

+1 for Indian procurement is rubbish, it's so bad it's almost difficult to comprehend how useless it is; surely someone near the top of the Indian MOD can see it?

 

[swerve]

this along with a UK WW2 vintage steam plant, US Amphib steam system which is an American system, plus it seems all the variety of fits from Indian steam turbines, to LM2500 and large variety of Russian GT, their is very little commonality between classes which must make it one of the most expensive fleets in regards to parts and general efficiency. an absolute nightmare a to support made worse by the bureaucracy

I regards to Vikrant I don't know as the competence of the project so far has been extremely suspect as the build seems slow and problematic for something that is relatively straightforward which is a larger CATOBAR Cavour(Also for something meant to be in service by 2018 I would have thought their would be more images certainly the QE's and Ford have had during their builds)

adding a Nuke carrier to support along with everything else is madness and a gigantic money pit in same way the Nuke Sub program has been(especially with the horror stories of the dreadful maintenance and poor CONOPS of the conventional submarines)

Afraid that Vikrant is STOBAR, like Vikramaditya. But agree on the rest. A complete mess.

 

[John Fedup]

It would have been interesting to see the Prince of Wales ending up as CATOBAR with the EMALS system. What would the performance be like and what would be the overall cost after factoring in whatever the F-35B versus F-35C differential? If the EMALS works out and a gas turbine/diesel propulsion has enough extra juice then maybe CATOBAR would be the way to go for India and simply license the QE/PoW design as a starting point.

 

[StobieWan]

There was always space/weight allocated either for a donkey boiler or extra gensets in the design so that should have been a straight forward deal. Building them from scratch with CATOBAR would be straight forward. Which is probably what's putting them off because we *know* the Indians like a challenge

 

[dragonfire]

re the power plant needing to be bigger - thats not necessarily so, eg the Charles de Gaulle CVN nasically uses a nuke from one of the SSBN designs

The other issue for India is which fleets will be flagged by carriers - ie she has 4 main maritime fleet headquarters for each fleet

in additon, there is the question of sustainment and rotation between fleets and amongst the existing carriers.

she's short on numbers

The Indian Navy has 3 not 4 Naval Commands, the Western, Eastern and Southern Naval Commands. Of which the Southern Command is predominantly a training command with some air stations and survey ships/responsibilities. So essentially the Eastern and Western commands are the ones with the surface and sub-surface assets.

There is no doubt the complexity of maintaining 3 different classes of carriers is really high not to mention undesirable. However OTOH there is definitely an advantage in seeking to create domestic capabilities in Naval design and build, what would be interesting to the forum members is that among all the military arms in India the IN is the only one which has its own design directorate; the Directorate of Naval Design, essentially an organisation within the IN which focuses on ensuring the asset capabilities that are required by the IN can be built indigeniously. If one takes a look at the surface ships newly built, being built and being planned one could see that there is definitely the sense that things are on track (the sub surface fleet though gives a diametrically opposing view, my personal perplexities on the matter continue).

Indian Navy has transformed from buyer to builder: Naval chief - Financial Express

Golden Jubilee Celebration of Naval Design Construction | Business Standard News


This is where the question of a nuclear powered carrier comes into question. It is the ultimate form of surface fleet design challenge, should India take it up ? There are pros and cons to this. The previous posts on the thread have elaborated on the cons a bit. In the view of keeping the debate balanced i would like to offer a few pros.

1. Design Challenge - one has to design, prototype and produce a product to see its capability.

2 Capability - With INS Arihant the IN, DRDO, private sector ship builders, BARC have come together to build a nuclear powered submarine. INS Vikrant is first for India again, A nuclear powered carrier seems like the next stage in this evolution

3. Prototype for future class of carriers. It's fair to say INS Vishal will only become operational around 2025 and that should give the IN 15-20 years to decide if it wants to continue with nuclear powered carriers or not for its future carriers

4. Exclusivity, how many countries have designed, built, operated a nuclear powered carrier - US, France, Russia ? UK with Queen classs ?

5. Power Projection

I mean the world is sitting up and noticing at the success of the Indian Mars mission

 

[swerve]

The UK has not designed or built any nuclear powered surface ships. Only submarines. The Queen Elizabeth class has electric propulsion powered by gas turbines & diesels.

Soviet aircraft carriers (including those now operated by Russia & other countries) all had conventional steam turbines. The USSR did build & operate some other nuclear-powered surface ships, though: the Kirov class (one still operated by Russia) & several civilian icebreakers.

 

[dragonfire]

The UK has not designed or built any nuclear powered surface ships. Only submarines. The Queen Elizabeth class has electric propulsion powered by gas turbines & diesels.

Soviet aircraft carriers (including those now operated by Russia & other countries) all had conventional steam turbines. The USSR did build & operate some other nuclear-powered surface ships, though: the Kirov class (one still operated by Russia) & several civilian icebreakers.

Thanks swerve for the updates. So if India succeeds in building a nuclear powered carrier, it would be the third country after US and France to do so. Very exclusive, very prestigious. India is already in the big leagues considering it built a nuclear powered submarine being preceded in doing so by US, Russia, China, France & UK. One must also consider that the aforementioned 5 countries are the permanent members of the UN Security council a table to which India has been seeking a seat for a while now.

 

[KiwiRob]

Soviet aircraft carriers (including those now operated by Russia & other countries) all had conventional steam turbines. The USSR did build & operate some other nuclear-powered surface ships, though: the Kirov class (one still operated by Russia) & several civilian icebreakers.

The Russians did design and had under construction the Ulyanovsk, I've seen photographs of her under construction at Black Sea Shipyard.

There are more than several Russian nuclear ice breakers, they've build 9 of them (hulls of two were built in Finland), 6 are still operating, and have the first of the new class Project 22220 under construction right now.

 

[swerve]

Scrapped 20% complete. A long way from "designed, built, operated".

And nine isn't 'more than several'. It is several.

 

[KiwiRob]

I was always under the impression that several is at least three but not exceeding five. The can also differ depending on context, however I would not call 9 nuclear icebreakers several I would call it many.

 

[swerve]

It's not worth getting into an argument about.

 

[AegisFC]

Soviet aircraft carriers (including those now operated by Russia & other countries) all had conventional steam turbines. The USSR did build & operate some other nuclear-powered surface ships, though: the Kirov class (one still operated by Russia) & several civilian icebreakers.

I know I'm being pedantic but the Kirov's were not exactly pure nuclear powered ships though. They had a horribly complex (and expensive to run) hybrid nuclear/steam plant. The open source info says they can run about 25 knots on reactors only but they need to fire up the boilers to go above that. That is the worst of both worlds.

 

[StobieWan]

I'd heard it was 22 knots nuclear only with about 1000 nm endurance on conventional boilers.

Either way, worst of all worlds (steam isn't responsive enough for emergency speeds so that's a lot of hassle for a few extra knots.) I guess using steam means you can skip reduction gear that you'd need if GT's had been selected but still...

 

[Blackshoe]

I know I'm being pedantic but the Kirov's were not exactly pure nuclear powered ships though. They had a horribly complex (and expensive to run) hybrid nuclear/steam plant. The open source info says they can run about 25 knots on reactors only but they need to fire up the boilers to go above that. That is the worst of both worlds.

If memory serves as well, KIROV had a reactor accident that was never fixed, either, which may say something about the design.

 

[StobieWan]

The accident happened at a time they had very low levels of funding so the Kirov simply languished like the rest of the surface fleet. Ushakov (as it's now named) is on the list for rework however.