![\"Carrier](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-133314418,imgsize-1584096,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/ins-vikrant.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAs the conflict in West Asia nears the sixth-month mark, the US is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been conducting operations against Iran and enforcing the blockade. This is the second carrier to have been pulled from the theatre by the Pentagon from the conflict. Earlier, the US Navy had pulled out the USS Gerald R Ford, it newest carrier, out of the fight. The Ford had been on deployment out at sea for 326 days, taking part in the operation to capture Maduro from Venezuela and then taking part in the operations against Iran. The USS Lincoln, too, has been deployed in the theatre for over eight months.These have been some of the longest deployments of aircraft carriers after the Vietnam War, during which the USS Midway was out at sea for 332 days. For the US, these carrier strike groups are central to how they project power. A single carrier air wing of the US Navy has more combat aircraft than roughly 75% of the world’s air forces.<\/p>\n Former US President Bill Clinton once famously stated, “When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that the first question that comes to everyone’s lips is – where is the nearest carrier?”. Aircraft carriers are thought of as the best tool for power projection away from shores. An aircraft carrier is a ship that is designed to launch and recover aircraft from its deck. This gives navies an option to project power for much longer distances and also affords the fleet an air defence umbrella.These ships are fully functional sailing military airfields. Carriers use different types of systems to launch and recover aircraft. The Indian Navy<\/a>‘s first aircraft carrier used the Catapult-Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) system. This system uses a steam or now an electromagnetic catapult to fling the aircraft off the deck. While landing, the pilot uses the aircraft’s tail hook to latch on to one of the three or four cables to come to a quick halt, which forms the arrested recovery part of the system. The two ships currently in Indian service use the Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (STOBAR) mechanism, in which the difference is that the aircraft takes off under its own power.The ship provides support for all types of aviation facilities and depending on the size of the carrier, can house between 1,000 to 5,500 crew.For India, this capability matters, as the country has announced that its area of interest ranges from the Bab El Mandeb in the East to the Malacca Strait in the West. New Delhi also sees itself as the preferred security partner in the wider region. For these reasons, aircraft carriers are an integral part of the Indian Navy. India currently operates two aircraft carriers; these are the INS Vikramaditya and the INS Vikrant. India is the first Asian country to operate an carrier, with the first ship INS Vikrant (1961), which was converted from the Britain’s Royal Navy’s HMS Hercules.Aircraft carriers have been used by India in the 1971 war, when INS Vikrant used its carrier air arm to target Pakistani air and naval facilities in what is now Bangladesh.Currently, besides India and the United States, eight other countries, namely China, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, Thailand and the UK. Many other countries operate smaller helicopter carriers and amphibious assault ships, which afford them some aviation capability but not the ability to launch fighters.<\/p>\n Beijing has stated that it has deployed a series of anti-ship missiles that they have dubbed ‘carrier killers’, these missiles are the DF-21D, DF-26, DF-27 and the YJ-20. The aim of these missiles from a Chinese perspective is to deter the Americans from bringing their carriers closer to China. Aircraft carriers due to their large size are easy to spot and hence target. At the same time the Chinese too are investing in this capability. The Chinese navy, with three such ships, now has the world’s second-largest aircraft carrier fleet after the United States, which has 11 such ships. India currently has two carriers in service, but the navy plans to operate three such ships in the future.What gives protection to an aircraft carrier are the ships and submarines that accompany it. This grouping of ships is called the carrier battle group. This flotilla includes destroyers and frigates that protect the ship from all sorts of threats in all three domains that are subsurface, surface, and air. The fleet also consists of submarines that move ahead of the flotilla, as well as an oiler or logistics ship that provides support to the fleet. These destroyers and frigates are armed with advanced missile systems that can protect ships from advanced aerial threats. In a conflict, due to their importance, these ships will be key targets for any adversary and are protected as such.<\/div>\n The Indian Navy’s INS Vikrant on the move during Exercise Varuna with the French Navy. (Image credit: Indian Navy) As the conflict in West Asia nears the sixth-month mark, the US is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been conducting operations against Iran and enforcing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-31"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-small":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-small-tall":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-small-square":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-small-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-medium":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-medium-masonry":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-large":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg","blogsy-wide":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"The Indian Navy’s INS Vikrant on the move during Exercise Varuna with the French Navy. (Image credit: Indian Navy) As the conflict in West Asia nears the sixth-month mark, the US is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been conducting operations against Iran and enforcing the […]","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":1,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":5,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg",400,225,false],"medium":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg",300,169,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ins-vikrant.jpg",150,84,false]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/author\/admin"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8709732a479614e7a8aa24d3eb1b239f30dc6d90c61464ed495001e7a469d856?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36 \u0b2c\u0b3f\u0b26\u0b47\u0b36<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koshalsambada.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Aircraft carriers: big stick of foreign policy<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Carriers are here to stay<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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