By Rahul Bedi, IANS
New Delhi : The absence of any blueprints for INS Vikramaditya (formerly Admiral Gorshkov), the 44,750-tonne Kiev-class aircraft carrier, is the principal reason for the delay in retrofitting the vessel for the Indian Navy (IN).
IN officers associated with Vikramaditya’s refit at the Sevmashpredpriyatiye shipyard in northern Russia told IANS that the carrier’s drawings had not been passed on to Russia by the Nikolayev South (Shipyard No 444) in Ukraine where it was built after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
“This led to a gross miscalculation by Russian engineers about the extent of cabling required for the carrier and the cost for it to remain operational for at least 25 years in keeping with our requirements,” a three-star IN officer said, declining to be identified.
Attempts, he added, were presently afoot by the Russian naval design bureau in St. Petersburg to re-create the carriers’ drawings by working backwards but that would take “ages”.
The vessel, the fourth Project 1143 carrier named Baku, was laid down in 1978, launched in 1982 and commissioned five years later.
Following the Soviet Union’s collapse it was renamed Admiral Gorshkov after an officer who was credited with building the Soviet Navy. In 1994, after a boiler room explosion, it docked for a year of repairs.
Though it briefly returned to service a year later, it was finally withdrawn from service in 1996 and sold to the Indian Navy in January 2004 for the price of its refit finalised for around $974 million.
An additional $525 million was agreed for 16 MiG 29K fighters, including four trainers that would form part of the carrier’s air group in the overall $1.5 billion deal.
IN officers said without blueprints and necessary technical drawings, Russian engineers had originally estimated that the carrier would require 700 km of cabling. Once work began, this was revised to 2,400 km.
Thereafter, the Russians reportedly wanted to only partially re-cable the carrier but the Indians insisted that it be completely re-wired.
This requirement, IN sources said, was conveyed in “no uncertain terms” to Moscow by former defence secretary Shekhar Dutt and recently by Defence Minister A.K. Antony during their Russian trips.
In July, the gross error in estimating the cabling led to the removal of Vladimir Pastukhov, general director of the Sevmash yard, and an announcement of a delay in the carrier’s delivery deadline by nearly three years to 2011-12.
Russia followed this up last month with the demand for an additional $1.2 billion for the refit, triggering a negative response from the IN chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on Dec 3, on the eve of Navy Day.
“It is a fixed price contract and they (Russians) should honour it” Mehta said. “If today we re-open Gorshkov, tomorrow all our projects with Russia can be opened for renegotiation.
“We have already paid $500 million for the ship and own it,” Mehta stated. “If the Russians put enough manpower on it today we could take delivery of the ship by 2010 or early 2011.”
(Rahul Bedi is a defence analyst. He can be reached at [email protected])