NEW DELHI: India will formally commission its first home-built aircraft carrier on Friday, the culmination of 17 years of construction and tests as the country seeks to catch up with regional rival China and its far larger naval fleet.

The INS Vikrant however will not have its own fleet of fighter jets on deck and instead will rely on a few Russian-designed aircraft borrowed from India’s only other carrier, the INS Vikramaditya.

France’s Dassault and Boeing are locked in a race to provide the Indian government with over two dozen jets earmarked for the Vikrant, a 262 metre-long vessel built at the state-run Cochin Shipyard in southern India.