Tuesday, June 02, 2015

US Navy, Indian Navy Begin Collaboration on Aircraft Carriers


The head of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier design and engineering office is set to meet his Indian counterparts later this month to discuss the design of India’s next carrier, he told USNI News last week.

Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers Rear Adm. Tom Moore will lead a Navy contingent to work with the Indian navy on designing its next indigenous aircraft carrier program.

“Our two countries are working through a number of close relationships, and one of the things the Indians are interested in is learning more about aircraft carriers,” Moore told USNI News on Thursday.

“So I’m actually heading up a Navy contingent to work with the Indian navy on aircraft carrier technology to the point that we could help them with their desire to build an indigenous aircraft carrier over in the Indian navy.”

He characterized the talks as being in the formative stages, with the Indians still trying to determine what capabilities they’d want their carrier to have.

“We’ve got a series of meetings with them coming up, they are interested in obviously learning from us big picture stuff about how you start from a clean sheet of paper and what are the processes used to build a carrier,” Moore said.

“But they’re really in the process of figuring out, ‘how big do I want it to be, how many planes do I want it to carry,’ along those lines. So once we’ve had those conversations with them, we’ll certainly be happy to engage with them where it makes sense for us.”

Moore and his team will begin meeting with Indian navy officials next month, as the two countries have tightened their defense and non-defense relationships in the last several months.

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