India's indigenous aircraft carrier

On April 11th, India's defence minister Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate contruction work on India's first indigenous aircraft carrier (popularised as the Air Defence Ship in the media). At a displacement of 37,500 tonnes, it will be bigger than carriers any country currently manufactures except the US, the UK and France. Russia built two 40,000 tonne displacement carriers (one of which, the Admiral Gorshkov, it is selling/"gifting" to India and is due to arrive in 2008), stopped building them.

The Air defense Ship is expected to be delivered by the Kochi Shipyard in eary 2012, and would hold Mig-29K fighters and Kamov-31 helicopters.