Central government may dump Rs2000-crore DRDO engine for a foreign option.
It would have been India’s first indigenously built fighter jet engine that could have boosted Tejas, the country’s first light combat aircraft, but the Rs2,000-crore Kaveri engine project could end up powering ships or in power generation.
The engine, a brainchild of the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO’s) Gas Turbine and Research Establishment (GTRE), is presently undergoing trials in Russia for airworthiness.
On Tuesday, when DNA asked GTRE director T Mohana Rao on whether Kaveri will make it to Tejas, he said: “The decision has to be taken by the top leaders.” The bad news is that the top leaders are looking for other options. “We are looking at foreign players to fit an engine into the LCA,” Defence minister AK Antony said in Bangalore on Tuesday. He said plans entailed scouting for engine variants to power the first of the 20 LCAs inducted into the IAF to take to the skies by 2012.
The Kaveri engine’s thrust capacity is just 65 kilo newtons (KN) while the others in the race, Eurojet and GE, have a capacity of 90 KN.
Rao, however, said that the investment in the Kaveri project would not go waste. “The Kaveri has other applications such as marine propulsion, meaning it can be used on ships and for power generation, with minor changes,” he said.
The Indian Air Force (IAF), the intended end user of LCA and Kaveri engine, has been unhappy with the progress of the latter. In 2003, a series of development snags in the Kaveri engine led to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) deciding to fit the LCA Tejas with upgraded American engines.
In mid-2004, the Kaveri engine failed in its high-altitude tests in Russia when a turbine blade came loose. IAF officials felt it was the last hope for the engine to power the LCA prototypes.
The following year, the MoD placed an order for 40 additional American engines for the first 20 LCAs under the production series. It also appealed for international help in completing Kaveri’s development.
The contract was awarded to French manufacturer Snecma in early 2006 for technical assistance, putting an end to the indigenous aircraft engine development dreams of DRDO.
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