Russia to explain carrier trials failure to India in oct.
Russia and India will discuss in October the situation around technical failures found in sea trials of an aircraft carrier refitted for India by a Russian shipyard, RIA Novosti reported.
The carrier Vikramaditya, formerly the Russian Navy's Admiral Gorshkov, was supposed to be handed over to the Indians on December 4, after a refit which has suffered a series of cost and time overruns and frequently caused disputes between the customer and supplier.
The ship experienced problems with some of its new replacement boilers during sea trials in the White Sea last month, and will now need yet more repairs, Russian shipyard managers said this week. The handover may now be put back several months.
"We plan to discuss our further cooperation in this project with our Indian colleagues at a meeting of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on military-technical cooperation which will he held in Delhi in early October," Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said.
No assessment has yet been made of the extent of the damage caused to the ship's propulsion systems, he said, but added: "The fact that our quality is getting worse really is a problem."
The handover date for the vessel will probably "shift to the right," he said, adding it was too early to set a new handover date.
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