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The first sea trial of the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier 1 to be known as INS Vikrant, last week has gone off well.
In fact, it met many of the parametres way beyond expectations. The ecosystem that has been built up in terms of industries, small and medium scale industries is phenomenal.
With over 76 per cent indigenisation achieved in building the largest ship ever built in Indian history, the residual expertise will come in handy for India’s shipbuilding industry in the future even as the Indian Navy will have two aircraft carriers operating together for a long time to come again.
In this interview at Kochi to Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale, V Adm Anil Chawla, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Navy’s Southern Naval Command, lists the advantage that such a huge project brings to the industry, to the navy and to India’s quest for self-reliance in defence.
Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters.
At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009.
Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties.
An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences.
Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau.
He tweets at @nitingokhale
