The elderly oil fired super-carrier USS Kitty Hawk, set to strike from the Naval List in 2008, is being coveted by an up and coming regional power.
The super carrier, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), is the last conventionally fueled aircraft carrier still in active service with the US Navy. She is set to be replaced next year by the new USS George Bush (CVN-77). In today’s Calcutta Telegraph a story emerged about the Indian Navy unofficially looking into acquiring the ship. India is in the middle of a large scale (on the terms of some $60 Billion) arms race with neighbor and sworn enemy Pakistan. They are buying submarines from France, fighter aircraft from Russia, AWACS gear from Israel as well as a couple of C-130J's from the United States.
The 80,000 ton Kitty Hawk, which was commissioned the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis, is the oldest super carrier in active service. India could only expect another ten-fifteen years of life out of the vessel at the most (in 1990 the USN declared that she only had twenty years of service life left in her). She would be expensive to operate and require a crew somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000~ trained sailors. However this may not be prohibitive as the Indian Navy is planning to have two 40,000ton medium sized aircraft carriers of a local design with 1500 man crews afloat by 2014. India has operated small carriers of former Dutch, British and Soviet design since the 1960s and has lots of experience. If India went for the two for one concept of canceling their un-built flattops and could talk Washington into it, the "Hawk" could be headed to warmer waters permanently....
