India Puts A Fighter It Does Not Yet Own On The Deck Of Its Newest Carrier

A Rafale Marine fighter landed on and took off from the Indian Navy’s home-built aircraft carrier INS Vikrant for the first time in trials intended to establish what has to be adapted before the aircraft can operate from the ship

Image Via: @indiannavy on X

Officials described the flight as a first step towards putting the type into service with the navy. Before it, the aircraft had been flown at a shore-based facility in Goa where a ramp and arrestor wires reproduce the conditions of an Indian flight deck. French pilots carried out those earlier tests under a contract signed last year. The purpose, according to accounts of the programme, is to identify the modifications the aircraft needs for carrier work.

India signed for 26 Rafale Marines from Dassault Aviation in April 2025, at a reported cost of 630 billion rupees. The order covers 22 single-seat fighters and four two-seat trainers, together with weapons, simulators, training and support. It provides for the transfer of technology so that Indian-made weapons can be fitted, and for Rafale fuselages to be built in India alongside maintenance facilities for engines, sensors and weapons.

Published accounts of when the aircraft will arrive do not agree. One report puts completion of deliveries at the end of 2028 or early 2029; others say the first jets reach the navy in 2029, with deliveries running to 2031. The navy has not issued a schedule.

Vikrant at present flies Russian-built MiG-29Ks, which launch from a ski-jump and are recovered by arrestor cables, an arrangement known as short take-off but arrested recovery. India’s naval light combat aircraft has also landed on the ship during earlier trials. The carrier was commissioned in September 2022, three years before the Rafale order was placed. Vikramaditya, the navy’s other carrier, is also to operate the type.

The ship was built over thirteen years at a cost of 200 billion rupees. It displaces 45,000 tonnes, is 262 metres long, has fifteen decks and 2,300 compartments, carries up to thirty aircraft and a crew of 1,600, and has an endurance of 7,500 nautical miles. India puts its indigenous content at 76 per cent. It is the fourth carrier the navy has operated, following a British-built Vikrant in service from 1961 to 1997, the British-built Viraat from 1987 to 2016, and Vikramaditya, commissioned in 2013.

The naval order sits alongside a growing Indian fleet of the same airframe. The air force operates 36 Rafales bought for 590 billion rupees, some of which were used in operations in May 2025. A further 114 aircraft are under negotiation at a reported cost of about 3.25 trillion rupees, under which France would supply eighteen ready-built and the remainder would be assembled in India at around twelve a year. That contract has not been signed, and one account suggests it could be concluded by the end of the 2026-27 financial year.

On 3 October the air force chief, Air Chief Marshal A P Singh, said timely delivery of the new Rafales, the Tejas Mk-1A and further Sukhoi-30MKIs was needed to keep the force’s combat strength from falling below 30 squadrons against a sanctioned 42.5.