India’s Next Aircraft Carrier: Another Vikrant or a CATOBAR Future?
India's aircraft-carrier programme is entering an important transition. The immediate question may appear straightforward: should India build another aircraft carrier based substantially on the successful INS Vikrant design? But beneath that question lies a much larger strategic issue. An aircraft carrier commissioned in the 2030s is likely to remain in service well into the 2060s or beyond. It therefore cannot be judged only by the aircraft India operates today. It has to be designed around the aircraft, weapons, sensors and unmanned systems that India may need two or three decades from now.
This is why the debate surrounding India's future aircraft carriers should not be reduced to displacement, number of aircraft or construction cost. The more important question is the type of carrier aviation India wants to possess in the future. Should India continue with the ski-jump and STOBAR model represented by INS Vikrant, or should the country eventually make the transition to a CATOBAR carrier capable of launching heavier aircraft at useful operational weights?
There is an especially interesting historical dimension to this debate. India has already operated a catapult-equipped aircraft carrier. In fact, the country's carrier journey began with a form of carrier aviation that was technologically different from the STOBAR system used by the present generation of Indian carriers.
India Has Been Here Before
The original INS Vikrant was not simply the ancestor of today's INS Vikrant. It represented a fundamentally different philosophy of carrier aviation. During its operational career with the Indian Navy, the carrier operated the British Sea Hawk fighter. Conventional carrier fighters such as the Sea Hawk benefited from catapult-assisted takeoff, particularly when operating with useful combinations of fuel and weapons.
This historical experience is important because it demonstrates that CATOBAR is not an entirely new concept for the Indian Navy. India has already operated aircraft from a catapult-equipped carrier. The country subsequently moved away from this model not because conventional carrier aviation had suddenly become irrelevant, but because the aircraft itself changed.
The arrival of the Sea Harrier transformed the equation. Unlike a conventional carrier fighter, the Sea Harrier possessed short-takeoff and vertical-landing capability. Its STOVL architecture significantly reduced the dependence on conventional catapult systems. The carrier could therefore be operated using a different flight-deck philosophy, with the aircraft launching from a short deck and recovering vertically.
INS Viraat continued this approach. Instead of returning to a conventional catapult-based carrier aviation system, India operated Sea Harriers from a carrier configuration suited to STOVL operations.
This was a rational technological choice for its time. The aircraft and the carrier were designed as part of the same system.
But that historical experience also teaches us something important about today's debate.
India did not abandon the catapult because catapults had become useless. India moved away from the catapult because its carrier aircraft had changed.
And now the aircraft are changing again.
From Sea Harrier to Vikramaditya and Vikrant
The retirement of the Sea Harrier eventually brought India back toward conventional carrier aviation. INS Vikramaditya introduced the Indian Navy to a different generation of carrier fighter operations, with the MiG-29K operating from a ski-jump-equipped deck using arrested recovery.
INS Vikrant continued this philosophy, but with an enormous difference: it was designed and constructed in India.
The indigenous carrier programme represented a major technological achievement. India demonstrated that it could design and build a large aircraft carrier, integrate aviation systems, operate carrier-based fighters and develop the industrial ecosystem required for complex naval platforms.
But INS Vikrant is fundamentally a STOBAR carrier. Aircraft use the ski jump to become airborne and subsequently recover using arresting gear.
STOBAR has significant advantages. It is considerably less complex than a full CATOBAR arrangement, avoids the need for large catapult infrastructure and can provide India with a practical carrier capability without waiting for every component of a much more ambitious carrier ecosystem to mature.
For a country trying to expand its carrier fleet while simultaneously developing submarines, destroyers, frigates, naval aircraft and unmanned systems, these considerations matter.
The problem is that a carrier is not simply a ship with aircraft parked on it.
It is an aviation system.
And the method used to launch those aircraft directly influences what those aircraft can carry and how they can perform their missions.
The Payload Problem
One of the most important arguments for CATOBAR is often misunderstood.
The advantage of a catapult is not merely that it makes it possible for an aircraft to leave the carrier deck.
The deeper advantage is that it gives the carrier much greater flexibility in launching aircraft at useful operational weights.
A fighter leaving a ski jump must operate within the aerodynamic and structural constraints associated with that type of launch. The carrier aircraft may have to make compromises involving fuel, weapons, stores and other payload depending on the aircraft, deck conditions and mission.
A catapult provides additional launch energy. That additional energy can allow a heavier aircraft to be launched while carrying a more useful combination of fuel and weapons.
This distinction becomes strategically important when the carrier is expected to conduct long-range missions.
A carrier fighter carrying a large weapons load but relatively little fuel is not necessarily more useful than an aircraft carrying fewer weapons but having substantially greater range and endurance. Conversely, a heavily fuelled aircraft with insufficient weapons may not provide the required strike capability.
The carrier therefore has to optimize the combination.
This is where CATOBAR becomes more than a mechanical launch system.
It becomes a combat capability multiplier.
The question is not simply whether an aircraft can take off.
The question is:
How much capability can the aircraft take with it when it leaves the deck?
That is a much more consequential question for a future carrier fleet.
CATOBAR Is About More Than Fighters
There is another reason why the CATOBAR debate deserves serious attention.
The future carrier air wing is unlikely to consist exclusively of conventional fighters.
Modern carrier aviation increasingly depends upon a network of aircraft performing different missions. Fighters provide air defence and strike capability, but a sophisticated carrier air wing may also require airborne early warning, electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, aerial refuelling, unmanned combat aircraft and other specialized platforms.
Some of these aircraft can be considerably heavier and more demanding to launch than a conventional fighter.
This is where the limitations of a ski-jump carrier become more significant.
A CATOBAR carrier can potentially operate fixed-wing airborne early-warning aircraft, giving the carrier battle group an airborne sensor platform with greater endurance and potentially better radar performance than a helicopter-based system.
That matters because the effectiveness of a carrier is increasingly determined by the quality of its information architecture.
A fighter may be able to engage an enemy aircraft at long range, but it needs to know where that aircraft is. A missile may have enormous range, but the carrier group needs sensors capable of detecting, identifying and tracking targets at appropriate distances. A carrier strike force needs to understand what is happening hundreds of kilometres away from the carrier itself.
An airborne early-warning aircraft can become one of the most important assets in that system.
Consequently, the question of CATOBAR is also a question about whether India wants its future carriers to operate a complete fixed-wing aviation ecosystem.
The Unmanned Carrier Is Coming
The argument becomes even more significant when unmanned aircraft are introduced into the equation.
Future carrier aviation will almost certainly include a greater number of unmanned systems. These may range from surveillance platforms to electronic-warfare aircraft, tankers, loyal-wingman systems and unmanned combat aircraft.
The carrier of the future therefore cannot be designed solely around today's fighter.
It must have the ability to accommodate an aviation ecosystem that is likely to be substantially more diverse.
This does not automatically mean that every future unmanned aircraft will require CATOBAR. Some may be capable of operating from ski-jump decks. Others could be launched using different mechanisms. But the more ambitious and heavier these systems become, the more valuable additional launch energy becomes.
The carrier that provides the greatest flexibility to its air wing may ultimately have a substantial advantage over a carrier whose aircraft are constrained by the limitations of the launch system.
China's Fujian Changes the Strategic Context
The discussion also has to be viewed against the changing naval environment in the Indo-Pacific.
China's aircraft-carrier programme has progressed from ski-jump operations to a much more sophisticated CATOBAR architecture with the Fujian. The significance of Fujian is not simply that China has built a larger carrier.
Its importance lies in the direction of Chinese carrier aviation.
A modern carrier with electromagnetic catapult technology allows the Chinese Navy to experiment with a much broader range of fixed-wing aircraft and heavier aviation systems.
India does not necessarily need to copy China's carrier design. India's strategic geography, industrial capacity, budgetary priorities and maritime doctrine are different.
But India cannot ignore the technological direction in which naval aviation is moving.
If the carrier that India commissions in the 2030s is expected to remain operational for several decades, it should be capable of adapting to the aviation environment of the 2040s and 2050s.
That is the real challenge.
Another Vikrant May Still Make Sense
None of this means that another Vikrant-type carrier is necessarily a mistake.
In fact, there is a strong argument for a pragmatic approach.
India needs carrier availability. Building a completely new class of CATOBAR carrier would involve enormous technological, financial and industrial challenges. Catapults are only one part of the problem. India would need the associated aircraft, arresting systems, deck machinery, power generation, aviation support infrastructure, training and maintenance ecosystem.
The indigenous aircraft programme would also have to mature alongside the carrier.
For this reason, an enhanced Vikrant-type carrier could be a rational bridge between India's present carrier capability and its future ambitions.
It could provide additional carrier numbers while India develops the technologies required for the next generation.
The danger would arise if the bridge became the destination.
If India continues building increasingly improved versions of the same STOBAR concept indefinitely, it could find itself with a larger carrier fleet but still without the full-spectrum aviation capability offered by CATOBAR.
That is the strategic question that needs to be addressed now.
The Carrier After Vikrant Should Be Different
India's carrier development could therefore be viewed as a progression through generations.
The first generation established India's carrier capability through INS Vikrant and conventional carrier aviation.
The second generation moved toward STOVL operations with the Sea Harrier and INS Viraat.
The third generation returned India to conventional fighter operations through INS Vikramaditya and then INS Vikrant, while simultaneously establishing indigenous carrier construction capability.
The next generation should ideally move beyond simply making another version of the same ship.
It should introduce a new carrier aviation architecture.
That does not necessarily mean that the next ship has to be the largest carrier imaginable. Nor does it mean that CATOBAR should be adopted simply because it is technologically impressive.
The design has to be tied to the aircraft.
India's future carrier fighter, including the Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter concept, will determine part of that requirement. Future unmanned aircraft will determine another part. Airborne early-warning requirements will determine another. Long-range anti-ship weapons, stand-off weapons, electronic warfare and network-centric operations will further influence the design.
The carrier should therefore be designed from the air wing backwards, rather than from the hull forwards.
The fundamental question should be:
What aircraft does India want to operate in 2045, and what carrier do those aircraft require?
That is a much more useful question than simply asking how many tonnes the ship should displace.
India Has Come Full Circle
There is a fascinating historical irony here.
India began its carrier journey with a conventional carrier fighter and a catapult-equipped INS Vikrant.
It subsequently moved to the Sea Harrier and a STOVL philosophy.
Then it moved back toward conventional carrier aviation with INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant, but through the STOBAR route rather than returning to catapults.
Now India has the opportunity to consider CATOBAR again—but this time with an entirely new generation of aircraft and technology.
The evolution could therefore be represented as:
Sea Hawk → Sea Harrier → MiG-29K/Rafale-M → TEDBF and future unmanned aircraft
and alongside it:
CATOBAR → STOVL → STOBAR → CATOBAR?
That is not necessarily a circle.
It is technological evolution.
The reason to return to CATOBAR would not be nostalgia for India's first carrier. It would be because the requirements of future carrier aviation may once again make catapult-assisted launch highly valuable.
What Should India Build?
The answer, therefore, should not be an absolute rejection of another Vikrant.
India may need an enhanced Vikrant-type carrier as an intermediate step. It can provide additional carrier capacity, reduce technological risk and sustain the indigenous carrier-building ecosystem.
But India should simultaneously commit itself to the next major technological leap.
That means developing the technologies required for a future CATOBAR carrier, including electromagnetic launch systems, advanced arresting systems, deck machinery, carrier-compatible aircraft, fixed-wing airborne early warning and unmanned carrier aviation.
The ultimate objective should not simply be a bigger aircraft carrier.
It should be a more capable carrier air wing.
A 65,000-tonne or larger carrier is not automatically superior to a smaller carrier merely because it is larger. What matters is what the ship can generate in combat: aircraft sorties, range, weapons carried, sensor coverage, endurance, survivability and the ability to sustain operations.
CATOBAR can contribute to all of these by expanding the range of aircraft that the carrier can operate and the useful loads those aircraft can carry.
That is why the debate deserves to move beyond the familiar question of “How big should India's next aircraft carrier be?”
The better question is:
“How much combat aviation capability should India's next carrier be able to generate?”
The Strategic Vanguard View
India should not abandon pragmatism. Another enhanced Vikrant may be the right answer for the immediate requirement.
But India should also avoid allowing the immediate requirement to define the strategic future.
The aircraft carrier commissioned tomorrow will remain in service long after today's fighters have been replaced. It will encounter a battlespace dominated by long-range missiles, unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, persistent surveillance and increasingly networked warfare.
The carrier therefore has to be designed for that environment.
India has already demonstrated that it can operate catapult aircraft. It has already demonstrated that it can operate STOVL aircraft. It has now demonstrated that it can build and operate an indigenous STOBAR carrier.
The next challenge is to decide whether India is ready to return to the catapult—not by going backwards, but by moving forward.
Another Vikrant may be the bridge. But the ultimate destination should be a carrier designed around the future of Indian naval aviation.
And perhaps the most important question is this:
Should India's next aircraft carrier simply carry today's aircraft—or should it carry India's ambitions for the next thirty years?
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