Monday, 21 January 2013, 03:25 Hrs
New Delhi: India has finalized an agreement for 99 GE 414 engines to power its indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).
This is the first, and
significant, engine contract for GE Aviation to power fighter jets for
India and the LCA will be the first combat aircraft in the inventory of
the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Navy with engines from the US.
Both services have US-made transport aircraft though and all the three
US engine majors, GE, Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney have supplied
power units for them.
DRDO Director General
(and Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister) V.K. Saraswat told
India Strategic (www.indiastrategic.in) in an interview that the
agreement with GE was signed recently, and that he expected the aircraft
to be a success for both the IAF and the Indian Navy.
The IAF has used
Fairchild Packets in the 1960s, has Lockheed Martin C 130Js now and is
set to get Boeing C 17 Globemasters beginning this year. The Navy used
the Lockheed Super Constellations for maritime reconnaissance. They are
all transporters.
GE won the contract for
its F414-GE-INS6 afterburner turbofan engine in September 2010 with a
narrow margin against a competing bid by the European Eurojet EJ 200.
It has taken nearly two
years for the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) of the Defence
Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which had selected the
engine, to work out details like how and how much of the engine will be
produced in India. A production contract is now being worked our between
GE Aviation and HAL, which will manufacture them, in this regard.
GE, which is already
supplying its LM 2500 gas turbine engines for some newer Indian Navy
ships, was given the necessary clearance by the US Government. It will
supply an initial lot of 18 engines while the remaining will be
progressively assembled/ made in India.
Honeywell's F 125N engine
was also selected recently to upgrade IAF's Jaguar aircraft, and a
production arrangement is now being discussed. This engine will empower
the aircraft to fly over high mountains, which at present, the Jaguars
cannot do.
Notably, in recent
interviews with India Strategic, both IAF chief Air Chief Marshal NAK
Browne, and Navy Chief Admiral DK Joshi, have said that they are keenly
awaiting the Tejas Mark II, which will be equipped with the GE 414
engine.
HAL is making 20 + 20
LCAs with the GE 404-GE-F213 afterburner engines for IAF in the first
two orders. After that, the plan is to produce around 200 LCAs for both
the IAF and Navy with the 414 engine. The naval aircraft will have a
strengthened fuselage, wheel base, and a drooping nose to facilitate
carrier deck landings.
Under the GE-ADA
contract, GE is to supply the latest version of the 414 engine beginning
2014, with improved Full Authority Digital Electronic Control (FADEC),
single Crystal blade design, single engine safety features, and other
electronic advances. The basic engine design, as it is used now for
instance on the US Navy's F/A 18 E/F Super Hornets, would stay the same
but as new innovations are developed and adopted, they would also be
passed on to India.
GE won a $5.3 billion US
Navy order for the same engine for powering 66 twin-engine F/A 18 E/F
Super Hornets and 58 E/A 18G Growler electronic attack aircraft in 2010.
And the US Navy's F 18 Hornet and Super Hornet aircraft built by Boeing
have done more than a million hours on GE's 404 and 414 engines.
GE's India President and
CEO John Flannery had earlier described the selected F414 engine as "the
highest-rated F414 model" and said that it includes "state-of-the-art
technology to meet India's demanding Air Force and Naval requirements."
Details of the exact
costs of ADA/HAL-GE arrangement are not known but an unconfirmed tender
bid figure was mentioned at $ 822 million.
Saraswat said that DRDO
and its agencies were keen to acquire total indigenous capability in
engine design, and that a good measure has been achieved in this regard.
Notably, DRDO's Kaveri
engine was initially selected to power the LCA but it has not been able
to achieve more that 80 kilo newtons thrust as against the requirement
of 95 to 100 kilo newtons asked by both the IAF and Navy.
Kaveri will now power
DRDO's unmanned strike air vehicle (USAV). Both the LCA and USAV though
will be extensively made of light weight composite materials. The weapon
package on board the USAV is not known and the project itself was
disclosed only in December 2012 by Defence Minister AK Antony who told
parliament that the "Kaveri spin-off engine can be used as a propulsion
system for the Indian Unmanned Strike Air Vehicle."
The Indian Air Force
wants to acquire long range unmanned aircraft. Kaveri, which has had
some contribution from the French Safran/ Snecma in its development
process, is the basic building block from which DRDO can move further
up.
DRDO is also in talks
with Boeing to acquire an aircraft testing wind tunnel, talks for which
are still going on, according to Saraswat.
Source: http://www.siliconindia.com
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