INS Vikramaditya joins Indian Navy: Shiv Aroor on why India is relieved that the battleship is finally here
Read more at:
INS Vikramaditya joins Indian Navy: Shiv Aroor on why India is relieved that the battleship is finally here
Read more at: ["Bahut pareshan kiya," fumes a sailor on the crew of INS Vikramaditya, the massive new addition to the Indian Navy's fleet. The Russians troubled us a lot, he says, succinctly describing the Indian Navy's experience over the last 10 years in this freezing town on the White Sea coast. The 45,000 ton aircraft carrier was ceremonially transferred to the Indian Navy on November 16, nearly five years later than promised and over $1.5 billion over contracted cost. While November 16 marks an undoubtedly important day for Indo-Russian relations, the over 1,600 Indians officers and sailors departing these shores later this month won't be sorry to do so. At every level, big and small, from the level of the entire navy, down to the youngest sailor, there's relief that it's finally over.
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/ins-vikramaditya-india-relieved-indian-navy-russia-shiv-aroor/1/325188.htm"Eta secret". Russian for "Sorry, that's secret". That, according to Indian personnel who've spent years in Severodvinsk learning how to sail their enormous new ship, has been the most common response from Russian personnel to any query or request for help. Over 188 days, during two rounds of sea trials between 2012 and 2013, Indian personnel are said to have been deeply irritated with the manner in which the Russian trial team on board ran the show, speaking largely in their own language, and ticking off mandatory test points on the ship, while bewildered Indian Navy personnel repeatedly requested them to slow down and take everyone on board, so to speak. The Indian side has had far less experience on the ship than it would have liked: of the 19,500 miles covered by the ship during trials, barely 1,700 miles were under the command of Commodore Suraj Berry, who is now officially commanding officer of the vessel.
Hundreds of Indian officers and sailors have been rotated through Severodvinsk over the last decade in embedded observation teams or specialised training units. The length of their commitment has meant that most brought along their families on two year stints to the town, a tough call, given that it is truly a tiny town whose economy is entirely centred around the shipyard that converted the Admiral Gorshkov into the Vikramaditya. Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburgh, Severodvinsk doesn't have any English schools to speak of, forcing many families to leave their children behind in India with relatives, or make the younger ones attend good Russian medium schools in this town. No Indian military project has seen such a large-scale excursion of personnel to another country for such an extended period.
Read more at:
for a small town, Severodvinsk has an unusually vibrant night life, with several popular clubs and restaurants. Two of them -- 'Rome' and 'Wasabi' -- have been popular with young Indian officers when they've got time off attending to ship duties. The local 'black' brew has apparently been the most intriguing on the Indian drinking palate.
"Brave as the Sun," reads a poster placed near the vessel at her commissioning ceremony. When the Vikramaditya transits through the Mediterranean Sea into relatively warmer climes next month, her crew will welcome the sun, for whom the ship gets its name, like they've perhaps never done before. Many among Vikramaditya's crew belong to the Garhwal hills and Himachal Pradesh, but they've never experienced the unrelenting, almost hostile cold of Severodvinsk, helped heartily by freezing cold winds from the north that bring snow and sleet in abundance. In the words of crewman Umrao Ghatori, "Such weather is simply not worth it. It is sometimes difficult to work. And when you're creating a warship, there's no 'downtime' as such."
Read more at:
Defence Minister AK Antony quipped on Saturday on the Vikramaditya's flight deck, "Everything is wonderful except the weather."
Over the last one year that the Vikramaditya has had its full complement of sailors and officers, the ship's galley has had to work with whatever produce is in season, since shipping in such large quantities of vegetables or fruit was unviable. The ship's cooks therefore learned to cook with several local vegetables as well. Given how the relative drudgery of open ocean makes meal time perhaps the most anticipated time of day on any warship, Vikramaditya's crew are near unanimously looking forward to food favourites. Lt Cdr Manoj Parashar, a mechanical engineer on the ship says his favourite vegetable, ladies' finger, is shipped in during a brief period from Sweden, and is hugely expensive. "I can't wait to be in a place where bhindi isn't such a big deal," he says.
Read more at:
all, Project 11430 has been a mutual embarrassment to India and Russia, that both sides will be relieved to see completed with the ship's delivery. Between 2007-2010, the programme very nearly destroyed relations when the Russians reported that the scope of work on the erstwhile Admiral Gorshkov had been severely underestimated. The project made both countries look deeply inept and inefficient, but the only one with anything to lose was India. The deal was one of the last big ticket items pushed through by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, after which it coursed from one disaster to the next, until Russia dropped a bomb in 2007 about how they got it so badly wrong. In many ways, those involved with bringing the deal in, will be relieved that the Vikramaditya is leaving Russian shores for what is hopefully the last time. They include the former Prime Minister, his defence minister George Fernandes, and former navy chiefs Admiral Sushil Kumar and Admiral Madhvendra Singh.
Incumbent Navy chief Admiral DK Joshi was polite when he said the ship was the result of "exceptional perseverance."
Antony even found reason to say, "Now that the ship is ours, I can confide in you. The whole programme very nearly failed."
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/ins-vikramaditya-india-relieved-indian-navy-russia-shiv-aroor/1/"The Indians changed a lot of specifications, and asked for many things that had not been contracted initially," says Igor Leonov, chief commissioning officer for the Vikramaditya project, and a man who will be one among 183 persons travelling with the ship to India next month to 'guarantee' her for the first year.
With only her hull harking back to the erstwhile Soviet warship she once was, and virtually everything else either brand new or fully refurbished, including thousands of kilometres of cabling, the Russians repeatedly suggest that Vikramaditya is effectively a new warship, not a repaired one. This, the Indian Navy agrees with. With an operational life of approximately 40 years, the Vikramaditya is unlikely to need any major work for at least a decade if not more. As she sails home, escorted by four Indian warships, including the Indian Navy's sole aircraft carrier INS Viraat from the Persian Gulf, the Indian crew knows that their new home was perhaps worth waiting for, and that they've effectively got a new warship for a second-hand price. The 183 Russians on board the ship for the journey home never fail to remind them of this.
Read more at:
that Russian contingent escaping their country's winter to sail to India will be nine interpreters who will be based in Karwar for a period of at least three months to ensure, in the words of one of them Sasha, that there are no "communication gaps".
Both sides know they've had too many of those.
Read more at:
View attachment 8664View attachment 8665View attachment 8666View attachment 8667View attachment 8668/QUOTE]
