What is in news : Sea trials of the country’s maiden indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-1), built by the public sector Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL).

About :

• First aircraft carrier designed and built in India
• It will be named INS VIKRANT
• Improve Navy’s capability to travel far from its home shores to carry out air domination operations
• Designed by the Indian Navy’s Directorate of Naval Design (DND), and is being built at Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL)
• Leads as the capital ship of a carrier strike/battle group. As the carrier is a valuable and sometimes vulnerable target, it is usually escorted in the group by destroyers, missile cruisers, frigates, submarines, and supply ships

Other Aircraft Carriers of India :

• INS Vikramaditya, currently the Navy’s only aircraft carrier that was commissioned in 2013, started out as the Soviet-Russian Admiral Gorshkov.
• The country’s two earlier carriers, INS Vikrant and INS Viraat, were originally the British-built HMS Hercules and HMS Hermes before being commissioned into the Navy in 1961 and 1987 respectively