Vikrant, Vikramaditya and the cost of changing carrier designs

Vikrant and Vikramaditya are described as substantially different ships, while the original Vikrant programme is recalled as a two-ship class. A proposed move toward nuclear propulsion for Vishal would introduce another major change in carrier design. Repeating an Indian-built design is favoured as a way to obtain ships with more similar capabilities. In the counterfactual, an earlier domestic programme could have used some of the time consumed by the Admiral Gorshkov conversion and secured funding for a more consistent class. That choice is linked to confidence in Indian construction, which is judged stronger by the time of the discussion than in the mid-2000s.