Honestly i’m suprised its only been recently that we’ve intended to get a carrier (or LHD)
For Thailand it might seem not as beneficial, but for Indonesia, which is almost quadruple the size of Thailand with a whole lot of ocean separating the islands, its probably more worth it
not only for power projection (because lets be real thats why we’re trying to get it in the first place), but also for QRF and humanitarian missions, such as during the Aceh tsunami where the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln played a key role in delivering supplies and rescuing survivors
Seahawks of the USS Abraham Lincoln in Aceh (2005)
our LHDs such as the Makassar-class can definitely do these, but the carrier can also be beneficial for R&D aswell since PT.PAL planning on building LHD’s in the future, and with the asking price of around $250million-$390million its ‘relatively’ cheaper than buying a newer LHDs or other carriers. Not to mention that some of our fleet commands are quite lacking in number of warships (notably the 3rd fleet in the east) which could use some reinforcements
Don’t know but it seem quite fishy to me, who is the target you want projecting your power for at first? Israel? This power projection thing is just not so related to the ASEAN region for my opinion, we all know our limit so we don’t really try to interfere any issue out of our own bourdary that is why you don’t see your government cooperated with our government to stop Myanmar killing Rohingya so that they stop coming to our country and causing tons of trouble. From my point of view, if it isn’t corruption then is just the leadership is just feeling good to themselves and don’t see the downside of it, they more likely end up in the situation like the Thai navy which letting it sail cost a lot of money but letting sitting at the port also cost a lot of money
Personally I think there are some merits to having an aircraft carrier despite not having much use for it as a purely power projection role.
Its basically a floating city and despite how the Indonesian archipelago would seemingly make it seem that they could simply just rely on smaller land based airports, Indonesia is still flanked on the west by the Indian Ocean.
The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 couldve probably been solved if there was a large enough aircraft carrier to serve as a base for patrol aircraft. That was the biggest hurdle in the search efforts since patrol aircraft needed to return to the airports, they cant search for very long. That was but one example aside from humanitarian assistance, though the question of if TNI Navy can afford to procure and maintain such a large asset is another one but tbf the Italians really have good offers so that could offset the costs. Indonesia still has to settle completely their obligations to South Korea anyhow as well for their contribution on the KF-21 project.
the AV-8s are not for SAR, and the aircrafts is not the main target, the carrier itself is what we’re looking for, the harriers are what we call “pelicin” in Indonesian, basically a free add-on or bonus item to go along with the carrier to smoothen the sale. 2-for-1 sale in a way
If the carrier is purchased then most likely we would probably station drones and turn it into a drone carrier or primarily use it as a enlarged-LHD and we cant really get an actual LHD because of the aforementioned costs
