Should India buy used QE class aircraft carriers?
Recently ideas have been going around to fulfil India's requirement of a 65k ton class super carrier.
The British Navy seems to be unable to maintain 2 super carriers in its fleet and the Government wants them to either mothball one carrier or sell it to a friendly nation.Naturally India is the only one in the market willing to buy such a big boat.
The Proposal goes as follows-
India buys there a used QE class carrier from the Brits for a bargain. Puts EMALS and VLS launchers on it and commissions it as INS Vishal.
But I think this plan has some problems-
1. An already falling hull-The British Navy has complained that HMS Prince of Wales has a terrible hull build quality and requires alot of maintenance
Lack of indigenous EMALS-GE is offering us EMALS tech with ToT but it costs $5 billion so its clear Navy will opt for an indigenous EMALS system, As of now DRDO is researching about the technology, but it seems progress will be slow. Slow enough infact that we might even build an indigenous hull before we make desi EMALS
Weapons Integration- The QE class carriers lack any kind of onboard weapons for Anti-air and Anti-shipping operations and relies on its escorts ships for the task. This has been a point of criticism and I feel like the Indian Navy still prefers on board weapons as they have done on the Vikrant class as it features Barak 8 and AK630 CIWS systems.But we already know how hard it is to integrate desi tech with NATO systems.
So at the end do you guys think we should buy a QE class?