The new Chinese Aircraft Carrier from Indian perspective

Yesterday China launches it first indigenous aircraft carrier. It is the 2^nd Aircraft carrier of China after Liaoning. As per reports, this aircraft carrier will be operational by 2020. It is quite surprising to know that China commissioned its 1^st Aircraft carrier in 2012. That carrier was an unfinished Soviet carrier which was purchased from Ukraine and re-fitted in China. India has been using aircraft carrier since 1961. So, it is quite clear that China is catching up to India in naval airpower and may surpass Indian navy soon.

Should India be worried from the new Chinese Aircraft carrier? I think ad of now we should not be worried about this carrier but we should be worried about Chinese naval doctrine in Indian Ocean. Now a days, Chinese warships & submains are often sighted in Indian Ocean. India need to build its power so that India can maintain its dominance in Indian Ocean. China even has problem with the name of Indian Ocean. As Chinese economy is dependent on Indian Ocean sea lanes, it is certain that Indian & Chinese navy will face each other in Indian Ocean. India has hardly 12 active submarines (only one of them is nuclear powered) and China has at least 5 times more submarine than India and most of them are powered by nuclear energy. India has just only one aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya and India is building two more carriers. One of them INS Vikrant has been launched in 2012 and may be operational by 2018. The problem with Indian Navy is numerous delays in manufacturing. The design work on INS Vikrant started in 1999 and construction started in 2009. Even today the work on the carrier is behind the schedule. India started work on 1^st indigenous nuclear submarine in late 80s and INS Arihant is still not operational. Indian Navy is facing the same delays which Army faced with Arjun tanks and Airforce faced with Tejas fighter. Indian Navy Scorpion submarine program is way behind its schedule and first 3 submarines will not have critical Air Independent Propulsion (AIP). Also the Scorpion leak may have compromised with the safety of all the 6 submarines. Indian government has still not awarded the of Project P75i program to any foreign submarine designer to build 6 more submarines.

Let us come back to Chinese Carrier program. Chine needs at least two carriers in its own water – in South China Sea and in East China Sea. So as of now Chinese will be confined in their own waters but they will certainly project their carriers outside their neighborhood when they will have more than two carriers. Communist navies had long ignored the role of aircraft carriers unlike western navies. China woke up in horror when then US President Bill Clinton sent US aircraft carriers in support of Taiwan in 1996. This marked the change in thinking of Chinese navy. Now they have also made aircraft carrier as the pride of their navy. Even Russians are making a proper aircraft carrier now. As per western experts, the new Chinese carrier is based on old soviet design and it doesn’t have advance features like CATOBAR. The displacement of the carrier is 50000 tones which is bigger than Indian carriers but smaller than US carriers. It can have up to 50 aircrafts (including helicopters). We also need to see whether Chines are able to develop as good carrier based aircraft or not. China have invested much time & money in building carrier killer missiles and we will have to wait to see the air defense capacity of Chinese carriers. As of now we can say that Chinese carriers may be comparable to Indian carrier but China has long way to go if it wants to project powers like US mega carriers like Nimitz class & Ford class carriers.