Not omnipotent

Tests of the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya failed

Tests of the aircraft carrier Vikramaditya, purchased by India from Russia in 2004, ended in failure - when trying to bring the ship to full speed, seven of the eight steam boilers failed. The exact cause of the incident is still unknown; specialists will begin inspecting the equipment only in a week, when the aircraft carrier returns to the Sevmash enterprise in Severodvinsk. Due to discovered problems, the delivery date of the Vikramaditya to the customer has once again been postponed: the Indian Navy will only be able to receive the ship in 2013.

Tests of the former "Admiral Gorshkov", and now "Vikramaditya" (translated from Sanskrit - "Almighty"), have been carried out in the Barents Sea since June 2012. In particular, on-board aircraft equipment and ship systems were checked, and takeoffs and landings of carrier-based MiG-29K fighters were performed. In September, an attempt was made to bring the ship to maximum speed, as a result of which seven of the eight steam boilers failed . At the same time, the boilers worked normally at low and medium speeds.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper, citing a source in the United Shipbuilding Corporation, as a result of the failure of the boilers, the ship did not lose speed and could reach a speed of up to 23 knots with a declared maximum speed of 29 knots. At the same time, a source from the Kommersant newspaper said that specialists now have to decide whether the ship will return to Sevmashpredpriyatie on its own or will be towed to the dock. After the return of the Vikramaditya, it will become known how much restoration work remains to be done.

As Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes, citing a source in Sevmash, the aircraft carrier has not lost the ability to move independently and is currently returning to the dock under its own power.

There is no clarity yet on what needs to be done. Thus, a source from the Interfax agency previously said that, despite the problems that had arisen in seven boilers, only three of them would need to be replaced. At the same time, Vasily Kukin, deputy director of the Special Design Bureau of Boiler Making (SKBK), which produced the boilers, said that there is no need to change the equipment; it will only be necessary to re-lay the refractory brickwork and replace special thermal insulation materials. All this, according to various estimates, will take from four to 12 months.

According to the former director of the Baltic Plant Oleg Shulyakovsky, the worst option may be damage to the boiler tubes in which steam is generated. The fact is that such tubes are made of a special grade of steel, the production of which in Russia has already been closed due to unprofitability. Such steel for Vikramaditya was ordered from Ukraine. If the tubes need to be replaced, the ship's delivery time may increase significantly, since Russia will have to wait for Ukraine to fulfill the order.

According to preliminary estimates, the cost of boiler repair work will be about a billion rubles; Troubleshooting will be carried out at Russia's expense.

Currently, the main reason for the incident is considered to be a design feature of the Vikramaditya boiler-turbine power plant. The fact is that the original design of such an installation with KVG-3D steam boilers implied the use of asbestos-containing materials as thermal insulation. In the mid-2000s, India abandoned the use of asbestos, which is hazardous to health, and demanded that Vikramaditya replace such materials with others. As a result, the ship was laid with thermally insulating brickwork, which did not withstand high temperatures.

The modernization of Admiral Gorshkov was considered an unprofitable project almost from the very beginning both in Russia and in India. The Indian control agency - an analogue of the Russian Accounts Chamber - argued, in particular, that the construction of its own aircraft carrier would cost the country much less, and the service life of the ship would be much longer. In 2007, the Indian Ministry of Finance refused to allocate funds to the Ministry of Defense to pay for the modernization of the aircraft carrier. At the same time, the Indian military department insisted on the need to acquire Vikramaditya. Funding for the project was resumed only in 2009, after the signing of an amended contract with Russia.

According to Shulyakovsky, the reason for the failure of the aircraft carrier tests could be the initially unsuccessful design of the steam boilers installed on the ship. According to him, the operation of such equipment on the aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov of Project 1143 (Admiral Gorshkov was built according to the same project) and on destroyers of Project 956 often ended in breakdowns. Thus, on destroyers, the actual service life of the boilers was only 20 percent of that declared by the developers.

At the same time, Shulyakovsky noted that new boilers were installed on the Vikramaditya, the warranty period of which was ten months (a surprisingly short period for military products), but expired long before the start of sea trials. Despite the fact that specific problems and breakdowns have not yet been clarified, the Russian side has already announced that it intends to persuade India to agree to the use of asbestos-containing thermal insulation. Presumably, this will help avoid failure of the power plant in the future.

According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, problems in the aircraft carrier's power plant were discovered at the end of July 2012, when a ship with a Russian crew and a commissioning team on board took part in a naval parade on the occasion of Russian Navy Day. The truth about these malfunctions was kept silent for a long time in order to complete tests of radio-electronic equipment, weapons systems and aircraft equipment in a calm atmosphere.

The aircraft carrier's responsible commissioner, Igor Leonov, told Kommersant that malfunctions in several boilers were a "purely mechanical problem." It is planned to correct the breakdowns promptly in order to transfer the Vikramaditya to India in October 2013. The Indian side intends to receive an already repaired ship, the degree of readiness of which at the start of sea trials would be estimated at 95 percent, already in April next year.

In 2009, Russia and India signed an agreement to amend the plan for repair and modernization of the aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Gorshkov. In particular, the cost of work increased by more than a billion dollars, and the deadline for the aircraft carrier's delivery was 2013. At the same time, Deputy Director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Alexander Fomin said that the aircraft carrier will be transferred to India at the end of 2012. Thus, 2013 was considered the deadline in case of unexpected problems or the need for improvements.

In general, India's patience is admirable. According to the contract concluded in 2004, India received the aircraft carrier for free, but paid for its repair and modernization, as well as equipping it with MiG-29K/KUB carrier-based fighters and Ka-27 and Ka-31 helicopters. The transaction amount was $1.5 billion, and the ship itself, according to the terms of the agreement, was to be received by the Indian side in 2008. The terms were later moved to 2011 and then to 2013, and the cost of the agreement increased to $2.3 billion.

The reasons for revising the cost and timing were: Russia, when concluding the contract, underestimated the scale and cost of the work. The shipbuilders actually had to install the latest equipment in a hull that was no longer new. Negotiations to amend the contract continued for several years, but the Indians still agreed to postpone the deadline and increase the cost of the work without demanding any compensation. India does not intend to demand compensation for missed delivery times this time either.

Any other customer would have long ago demanded payment of a penalty, or even completely refused to purchase, if not the entire ship, then at least the boiler-turbine units for it. After all, it is difficult to call it rational to purchase equipment, the most important elements of which the seller produces from imported raw materials. The supply and maintenance chain in this case becomes very long, which should affect the maintenance and repair time of the ship, if required.

In this whole story, it remains unclear why the Russian side decided to offer India boilers, which, according to Shulyakovsky, did not perform very well during service on other ships. And it is even more incomprehensible why India, usually picky about the military products it purchases, agreed to install such boilers on a warship, which in the future should form the core of the first Indian aircraft carrier strike group.

In 2004, the acquisition of Vikramaditya was considered an extremely important and necessary step by the Indian authorities. The modernized ship was supposed to replace the outdated Viraat, a former British light aircraft carrier Hermes built in 1959, in the Indian Navy. However, with each postponement of the delivery date of the aircraft carrier, the sense in such a purchase becomes less and less - in 2017, should enter service with India. the Vikrant aircraft carrier of India's own design

Vasily Sychev

Not omnipotent

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