INS Viraat to have short refit

It will be dry-docked most likely in August first week.

INS Viraat, India's second aircraft carrier, was commissioned in 1987. Photo: Vivek Bendre

ust when a nationwide debate is brewing on the fate of the aircraft carrier INS Viraat after its proposed retirement from the Indian Navy next year, the carrier is set to undergo one last maintenance routine, a short refit, at the Cochin Shipyard in early August.

Arriving in Kochi by the end of this month, Viraat would be dry-docked most likely in the first week of August for a brief cycle of underwater maintenance spanning 60 days at the yard, said informed sources.

The current refit regimen comprises month-long work on the carrier at the dry-dock followed by a spell of workup — when the vessel and its crew are put through their paces to ensure optimum serviceability and war-readiness.

Refit package

Sources indicated that the refit package included reinforcement of the hull —which would be checked for barnacles, cleaned and repainted and re-plated wherever necessary — and a thorough check on its pipes and hydraulic systems for a glitch-free run-up to the International Fleet Review (IFR), the 56-year-old carrier’s last mega event.

As is the practice, the 30-day workup will be steered by a team under the Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST).

Having completed a five-month refit in March 2013, Viraat was to have arrived for another cycle of routine refit in December last year, but it was delayed in view of the retirement plan.

As first reported by The Hindu in February this year, the tough call to decommission the long-time flagship of the Navy — which had served the Royal Navy as HMS Hermes before joining the Indian Navy in 1987 — was taken after its maintenance defied economic sense. Serviceability issues with its integral fleet of Sea Harrier fighters further forced the decision.

The last routine refit of Viraat cost the Navy around Rs. 70 crore, but the coming one would be done at less than Rs. 20 crore.

Once the fate of the carrier is decided — as States like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have expressed their desire to convert the behemoth into a floating museum — it will be dry-docked again in Kochi in the months following the IFR for a decommission refit when operational weapon systems will be dismantled for retrofitting on some other warship. The platform would be made sterile and systems deactivated when it is decommissioned, the sources added.