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Looking at these images of the Vik sailing alongside the Nimitz, a few things stand out:
1. The Vik has a *massive* island—much larger than the Nimitz's. On a small carrier, that eats up precious deck space.
1. The Vik has a *massive* island—much larger than the Nimitz's. On a small carrier, that eats up precious deck space.
2. The Vik's island is not perched at the very edge of the deck, but more towards the middle. And it's a narrow vessel, which could cause issues with smooth flight operations.
3. The absence of a deck-edge elevator is quite jarring. Instead, there is just one elevator carved into the middle of the deck, and it interferes with both, the landing strip and the take-off ramp. https://twitter.com/AncientSubHunt/status/917443859000516613
4. The ship has no jet blast deflectors. So when MiG-29s are preparing for take off, the deck behind it has to be cleared. This shouldn't be an issue when taking off from the longer runway on the port side, The shorter one though...
All-in-all, it appears to fall very short of being a "proper carrier". It has all the apparent shortcomings one would expect from an aircraft-carrying cruiser converted to a flat-top.
The Vikrant looks like better though-out. Which isn't surprising, given that it is a clean-sheet design.
