India to develop jet engines for aircrafts with foreign collaboration

Highlights:

• India is to develop jet engines for aircrafts like Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)  in association with the International Engine House.
• Presently, the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas is integrated with an imported engine.
• For this, indigenous engines will soon be developed.
• Such indigenous engines will also be used to power Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).

• Flight Operational Clearance (FOC) configuration of LCA Tejas demands higher thrust as compared to the intended engine requirement. 
• Hence the Kaveri in present architecture cannot be integrated. 
• A modified engine version will be required to induct with LCA Tejas. 
• Thus, for development of proposed engine, technological capabilities built through Kaveri engine project will be used.
• The LCA FOC variant and the Mk1A variant are powered by GE-F404 engines. 
• On the other hand, LCA-Mk2 and AMCA will be powered by a more powerful GE-F414 engines, in initial phases.

• The Project Kaveri was sanctioned by Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in 1989. 
• The project ran for 30 years with an expenditure of Rs 2035.56 crore. 
• It witnessed the development of nine full prototype engines as well as four core engines. 
• Under the project, 3217 hours of engine testing was conducted. 
• It also completed altitude tests and Flying Test Bed (FTB) trials.