1953–1961: two Sealands at Kochi and a carrier from Belfast

Indian naval flying began small and late. Wikipedia dates the air arm to 1948, but the first unit came five years later: on 11 May 1953 a Fleet Requirement Unit of two Short Sealand amphibians, five pilots and two observers was commissioned at Kochi under Lieutenant Commander Y. N. Singh, and the same day the air station there, later INS Garuda, was inaugurated. Two Fairey Fireflies followed in February 1954, and the unit was recommissioned as INAS 550 on 15 June 1959. Its job was unglamorous — towing targets for the fleet’s gunners and training observers — but it gave the navy a cadre of aviators before it had a carrier. The decisive purchase was the light fleet carrier Vikrant, the former HMS Hercules, commissioned at Belfast on 4 March 1961 with INAS 300 flying Hawker Sea Hawks and INAS 310 flying French Breguet Alizé anti-submarine aircraft.

1961–1971: Goa, the Sea Hawks and the Bay of Bengal

The carrier arrived just in time for a war it did not fight. In December 1961, during Operation Vijay, Vikrant and a contingent of 12 Sea Hawks enforced a blockade off Goa without seeing action, and in April 1962 the army handed the captured Portuguese airport at Dabolim to the navy; INS Hansa, commissioned at Sulur near Coimbatore on 5 September 1961, moved there and has been the arm’s main base ever since. In 1965 Vikrant was in dry dock and the air arm sat the war out. 1971 was different. From 4 December, Sea Hawks from Vikrant struck shipping and harbours at Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong, then Khulna and Mongla, as India blockaded East Pakistan. Wikipedia credits carrier aircraft with sinking the gunboat Comilla and damaging the Rajshahi; Indian accounts claim far more. One Alizé was shot down by a Pakistani aircraft. The Sea Hawk record was the air arm’s founding legend, but it was achieved against an opponent with almost no air cover in the east.

1971–1991: Soviet patrol aircraft and the Sea Harrier

After 1971 the arm turned to the open ocean and to the Soviet Union. Lockheed Super Constellations and Britten-Norman Islanders came in 1976, three Ilyushin Il-38s in 1977 and two more in 1983, and eight Tupolev Tu-142MK-E long-range patrol aircraft in 1988; Kamov helicopters went to sea on destroyers and frigates. The carrier side stayed British. India ordered six Sea Harrier FRS.51s and two trainers in November 1979, the first three landed at Dabolim on 16 December 1983 and the last Sea Hawks went the same year; in all 30 Harriers were bought, flying from Vikrant and later Viraat. The Sea King Mk.42 family — 12 Mk.42, three Mk.42A, 20 Mk.42B with Sea Eagle missiles from 1988 and six Mk.42C — did the anti-submarine work. The costs showed in the accident record: Wikipedia counts 17 Sea Harrier crashes that killed seven pilots, which by 2009 had cut the fleet to 12.

1991–2016: new air stations, Vikramaditya and the MiG-29K

The 1990s gave the arm new air stations rather than new aircraft. INS Dega at Visakhapatnam was commissioned on 21 October 1991, INS Rajali at Arakkonam, with what Wikipedia calls the longest military runway in Asia, on 11 March 1992; the Alizé was retired in 1991 and the first Vikrant in January 1997. The next carrier was a rebuilt Soviet one. India ordered 12 MiG-29K and four MiG-29KUB fighters with the ex-Gorshkov in January 2004 and 29 more in January 2010; the type entered service in February 2010, and INS Vikramaditya was commissioned at Severodvinsk on 16 November 2013. The MiG-29K brought supersonic speed and a modern radar to the fleet, but not reliability: the Comptroller and Auditor General reported serviceability of 37.63 per cent in 2016, and 62 per cent of its engines withdrawn for design defects. The Sea Harrier flew from Viraat for the last time on 6 March 2016 and was formally retired at INS Hansa on 11 May 2016.

2016–2026: P-8I, MH-60R, two carriers and the Rafale M

The last decade has been about patrol aircraft and helicopters. The first Boeing P-8I reached Rajali on 15 May 2013 under a 2009 contract for eight; four more followed, flown by INAS 316 at Goa from 29 March 2022, and the Tu-142 retired on 29 March 2017, the Il-38 on 31 October 2023. MH-60R Seahawks, the first two handed over in July 2021, formed INAS 334 at Kochi on 6 March 2024 and INAS 335 at Goa on 17 December 2025. The home-built carrier Vikrant was commissioned on 2 September 2022, and on 28 April 2025 India signed for 26 Rafale Marine fighters, 22 single-seat and four two-seat, for both carriers. In the May 2025 conflict with Pakistan the government says the navy deployed its carrier battle group with MiG-29Ks and airborne early warning helicopters; no naval air combat was reported by either side.

What works, what does not, and what is still missing

The strengths are real: two carriers, a patrol force built around the P-8I, and a growing Seahawk fleet with a support deal signed in November 2025. The weaknesses are just as clear. The MiG-29K has a poor serviceability history and has lost at least five aircraft in accidents since 2018, according to Wikipedia; the Rafale M will not be complete before 2030, and sources disagree on when the first will even arrive. The Sea King Mk.42B left service in June 2026 with its successors still being delivered, the Kamov Ka-31 follow-on order was suspended in 2022, and the large utility and multi-role helicopter programmes are still plans. Even the arm’s size is uncertain: its own encyclopedia page gives 23 squadrons and about 300 aircraft, the parent navy’s page 21 squadrons. Official naval sites could not be reached for this page, so several counts here rest on Wikipedia and are marked as such.