India seeks to buy Rs 150,000 crore of aero engines in a decade
By Vikas Gupta
Defence News of India, 21 February 23
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) has identified a gap in India’s autonomy in the areas of aircraft, marine and land systems engines. Statements from senior Indian officials and a growing number of tie-ups between Indian defense companies and foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) over engines indicate a growing focus on this area.
Addressing a seminar at Aero India 23 on February 14, Rajnath Singh said it was time to ensure Indian planes fly with locally developed engines.
“The Department of Defense is working on the details of local aero-engine manufacturing to give a new boost to the aerospace sector and achieve full self-sufficiency,” Singh said at the seminar.
Over the next decade, the Indian Army is set to purchase almost a thousand engines for combat aircraft alone – 228 engines for 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA), 83 engines for 83 Tejas Mark 1A fighters, 126 for Tejas Mark 2 fighters, 294 engines for 147 twin-engine Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and 117 engines for 57 twin-engine Multi-Role Carrier Borne Aircraft (MRCBF).
The approximate cost of the engines for each fighter jet is approximately 20-30% of the ticket price of the fighter jet itself. An existing acquisition that gives an indication of the cost of these engines is a Rs 5,375 crore contract with General Electric (GE) for 99 GE F-404IN engines.
This puts the cost of each engine at Rs 55 crore. All other engines are more modern, more powerful and therefore more expensive than GE F-404IN engines. Assuming an approximate cost of Rs 75 crore for each of these engines, the MoD’s aircraft engine purchase bill will amount to at least Rs 75,000 crore. Considering the need for periodic overhauls and upgrades, its lifecycle expenditure will comfortably double to Rs 150,000 crore over the next decade.
Added to this are the hundreds of aircraft engines needed for an anticipated fleet of unarmed airborne vehicles (UAVs), which are the new face of warfare. UAV engines are said to be lighter and cheaper than fighter jet engines because they are not needed to power such capable aircraft.
DRDO’s first high-performance autonomous vehicle will be the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV). This relies on a positive result of the Kaveri engine project – which was DRDO’s unsuccessful bid for an engine for the Tejas. The Kaveri’s 50 kiloNewtons (kN) thrust will suffice for the UCAV, but it lacks the performance and reliability to propel the Tejas.
The first potential foreign OEM partner to throw its hat in the ring is Britain’s Rolls-Royce, which has offered to partner with DRDO to design and develop an engine for the AMCA, which will form the backbone of the fifth generation of the IAF. fleet of hunters in about ten years.
But for now, Rolls-Royce is the only one offering to co-develop a high-performance aero engine with Indian partners.
The relationship with the French company Safran (formerly Snecma) was flawed after four years of fruitless talks about cooperation to improve the Kaveri. Snecma was unwilling to share key technologies, such as the monocrystalline blades and high-temperature materials needed for the engine’s combustion chamber.
The DRDO already has significant material technology, such as nickel alloys, which can withstand temperatures up to 1,400 to 1,500 degrees Kelvin. These temperatures are created in the “hot end” of the engine, while generating 80 to 90 kN of power.
Neither is Indiahave the necessary facilities for the development of cutting-edge aerospace products. There is only one wind tunnel in the country, that of the National Aeronautical Laboratory, which is almost six decades old.
American engine manufacturers, such as Pratt & Whitney and GE, were unwilling to share any intellectual property that might result from a co-creation project. Washington and New Delhi were discussing the co-development of a fighter engine under the Defense Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI), but the American companies decided not to share the intellectual property.
Besides Rolls-Royce, engine builders were mainly interested in maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of existing engines.
Godrej Aerospace announced on Monday that it has won an order to manufacture eight DRDO engine modules for aerial applications. Godrej Aerospace beat the competition from 25 companies, due to its proficiency in working with high temperature materials and its decades of experience.
On February 13, GE signed a contract with Cochin Shipyard Limited to provide a comprehensive set of digital solutions to enhance the capabilities of the LM2500 marine gas turbines powering the Indian Navy’s first indigenous aircraft carrier INS vikrant.
On Wednesday, Crown Group signed a memorandum of understanding with Aniba Solution Pvt Ltd, to design and develop a control system for marine gas turbine engines for the navy.
