Pretty decent sized coastline to guard, + there's troubled waters for a variety of reasons both east and west trade routes.. piracy to the west and dragon to the east.
India strengthens its hold over the choke points in the IOR through strategic naval presence, military bases, and alliances, with a keen eye on vital areas like the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, Sunda Strait and the Bab-el-Mandeb for security and influence. Additionally, India's strategy is fortified by leveraging locations such as Chabahar, Agaléga, Duqm Port, Minicoy, and Agatti, in conjunction with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
This involves the issue of military funding and financial allocation, as well as the country's military policies. Except for the United States, which can bear immensely large military expenses, other countries have their own priorities. How much does the cost of the Indian Navy account for in India's military spending? Can it replace the army as the main construction force in the future? Does Modi have any plans for military reform in India? This may all affect how many aircraft carriers India will eventually build, as the supporting ships for aircraft carriers are larger in scale and personnel and training are long-term expenses
The NAVY is by far the "best" of the 3 services in terms of self reliance. Ships are also just a little easier to build than aircraft so that helps too.
Indian southern part is peninsula with really long maritime borders and huge EEZ, also sitting at the busiest trade routes. I think 5 aircrafts will be good enough. Indian govt should focus more on SSN and SSK.
Due to troubled geopolitics India has had to maintain both a large land based force and a sufficiently large navy due to large coastline, having strategic bases at Andaman and Nicobar and other islands in the region. Land based forces form a larger chunk due to hostile relations with China and Pakistan. Navy is large and powerful enough to be called a strategic power in this region.
They always tend to avoid real questions, such as the proportion of Indian naval spending to Indian military spending, whether the focus of Indian military will shift towards the navy in the future, which are important factors in implementing the development of Indian aircraft carriers. They reply to the clich é d threat from China, or deliberately emphasize that they do not pose a threat to the Americans. We are used to answering without any novelty
To be fair, if we look past the struggle in the shipbuilding process (and that’s a big if, I know) and that some of the systems are still missing, both Vikrant and Vikramaditya are fairly well designed carriers, trading peak sortie rate with short takeoff routes for a good deck plan optimized for long take-off sorties, which combined with the more compact MiG-29K platform may actually result in comparable, if not greater strike capability compared to the 1143.5+T-10K combination, so I wouldn’t say it’s “too small” for a basic power projection tool.
