By IANS,
New Delhi : The Indian Navy’s acquisition of Russian-built aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov is facing yet another controversy as the accouting watchdog, the Comptroller and Audit General (CAG), Friday revealed that the “second-hand” warhorse will be 60 percent costlier than a new one and there is a risk of further delay in its delivery.
According to the CAG report, the objective of inducting an aircraft carrier in time to fill the gap in the navy has not been achieved due to the delay in the delivery of the warship.
Also, by the time the aircraft carrier will be delivered, it is not clear how the navy with continuously depleting manpower would provide “adequate complement battle group to the carrier”.
“The cost of acquisition has more than doubled to USD 1.82 billion in four years. At best Indian Navy would be acquiring, belatedly, a second-hand ship with a limited life span by paying significantly more than what it would have paid for a new ship,” it said in an annual report.
The purchase of Admiral Gorshkov faced controversy when Russia escalated the price for its refitting in 2007 and also pushed back its delivery date.
According to the CAG report, the platform is scheduled to be delivered by 2012 and would be due for its second refit in India by 2017.
Moreover, the report predicts that the Russian shipyard might as well fail to stick to the revised scheduled delivery date.
“Overall work progress continued to be slow and needed to be accelerated to meet even the revised scheduled. Given the work needed to be done, preceeding the undocking and the cascading effect of delay in undocking on downstream activities, there was a risk that the delivery acceptance trials of the ship would not be completed by 2012,” the report said.
“It can be seen that Indian Navy was acquiring a second-hand refitted aircraft carrier that had half the life span of and was 60 percent more expensive that a new one,” it said.
According to the CAG’s estimates, the design and construction of a new aircraft indigenously would cost $1.145 billion and would take two years for design and development and eight years for construction. It would have a life of 40 years.
On the other hand, refurbishment of Gorshkov is estimated to cost around $2.6 billion and will take 46-50 months. The life of the vessel would be only 20 years.
The CAG report also points at the payment terms not directly linked to the physical output.
“Financial control by the Indian side was diluted as payment terms were not linked to physical outputs. Thus, though 66 percent of the contracted cost of repair and refit has been paid, only 35 percent of the work has been completed,” it noted.
Despite the exorbitant price tag, the CAG report points out the carrier has limited operational capabilities and certain key capabilities which would enable the ship “to meet potential threats or challenges” had either not been provided for or had been postponed to a later date.
Then there are further problems with the acquisition, according to the accounting watchdog.
“The anti-aircraft missile complex selected to be fitted in the ship failed during the trials and the refurbishment contract was concluded without the missile system. This implies that the ship would not have a CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) till her first refit in India in 2017,” revealed the report.
The CIWS is a vital naval shipboard point weapon for detecting and destroying incoming anti-ship missiles and enemy aircraft at short range.