Doubts Over INS Vikramaditya's Revised Delivery Date Of End-2013

Frustrated by delays and cost overruns in the refurbishment of the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, India intends to take up the matter with Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov during his official visit to India. The refurbishment hit another snag last month during sea trials when after an engine-boiler malfunctioned, causing the Russian shipyard to revise the delivery date from December 2012 to October 2013. With the original completion date long gone in 2008, this delay is the latest in a long line of postponements, cost overruns and mismanagement. According to the United Russian Shipbuilding Corporation, the ship's boilers were damaged due to failures in the brick insulation separating them from the ship's structure. The shipyard also used the “sub-standard Chinese firebricks” (a claim refuted by China) because India allegedly refused to use asbestos around the boilers. However, it is still unclear how the shipyard intends to tackle the boiler problem. The series of misfortunes date back to 2007 when Sevmash shipyard director, Vladimir Pastukhov was fired over his mismanagement of the project. This was followed up with Russia demanding $3billion, over three times the original cost, to refurbish the carrier. Staring at the prospect of not having an aircraft carrier, India renewed the agreement to pay $2.2 billion instead. In 2010, an Indian Commodore, Sukhjinder Singh, was dismissed from service after it emerged that he had been blackmailed to influence the negotiations over the carrier's cost. “When we opened up the equipment we realized that the scope of work would be far bigger than [what] the original contract envisaged. Most equipment had to be replaced and the ship was completely rewired with 2,400 kilometres of new cables,” said Sevmash Director-General Andrei Dyachkov. “Never before has an aircraft carrier undergone such massive modernisation”. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday the matter will be discussed by the two countries in October and early November at a series of Russia-India summit meetings. “We are sure that all these complex problems will be sorted out at the summit,” he said. "We will tell the Russians to step up the workforce at the Sevmash shipyard for the refit-repair of Vikramaditya. A leeway of three to four months is provided in the contract after the December delivery date...Beyond that, penalty clauses and liquidity damages could kick in,'' a defense official was quoted as saying by Indian daily, The Times of India. The ship, formerly known as Admiral Gorshkov has a displacement of 45,000 tonne, a maximum speed of 32 knots and an endurance of 13,500 nautical miles (25,000 km) at a cruising speed of 18 knots. In anticipation of the refitted Vikramaditya, India has begun induction MiG-29K naval fighter jets that will operate in STOBAR (short take-off but assisted recovery via arresting wires) mode. By Bindiya Thomas