No Carrier for India's New Carrier Aircraft

[tigershark]

No Carrier for India's New Carrier Aircraft
By vivek raghuvanshi
Published: 2 Jun 13:57 EDT (09:57 GMT)
NEW DELHI - The first of India's 16 contracted MiG-29K naval aircraft will land at a naval air station because the Indian Navy currently has no aircraft carrier in operation.

The service's only aircraft carrier, INS Viraat, is undergoing upgrades, and delivery of the retired Russian aircraft carrier that was supposed to carry the Russian MiG-29Ks is behind schedule.
Related Topics

    * Europe
    * Asia & Pacific Rim
    * Air Warfare
    * Naval Warfare

Thus, the MiG-29K will go to the Naval Aviation Centre at INS Hansa in Goa, which is being built to train personnel for the Indian-developed aircraft carrier, the Air Defence Ship.

The first MiG-29K, expected to arrive in India this month, will operate from a flight deck built to train naval aircrew at the naval air station.

India agreed to buy 16 MiG-29Ks from Russia for around $660 million along with the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov in 2004. However, the Gorshkov's delivery ran into rough weather when Moscow last year told the Indian Navy to dish out $1 billion more than the contracted price for the ship, which has led to a stalemate and a cooling of Indo-Russian defense ties.

The contract also stipulates the procurement of hardware for pilot training and aircraft maintenance, including flight simulators and interactive ground- and sea-based training systems.

Deliveries of all 16 aircraft are expected to be completed by 2009.

Source
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3557972&c=ASI&s=SEA