French Safran and DRDO combine to give India its first jet engine

India may soon approve a joint project by French firm Safran S.A and India’s Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), a lab under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to develop and produce 120 Kilo Newton engine which will power India’s twin engine Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) fighter, a move that comes shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for indigenous development of jet engines from the ramparts of Red Fort during his Independence Day speech, people familiar with the matter said.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has also indicated that India will soon embark on the critical task of developing engines for fighter jets. HT learns that Safran-GTRE will develop nine prototypes of fighter engines within a time frame of 12 years. The engines will initially developed with 120 KN power but go up in capacity to 140 KN by the end of the 12 year time period.

The jet engines will be developed in India under Indian IPR with Safran transferring 100% of the technology to DRDO, including crystal blade technology, the people cited above added. These are blades in the engine that are usually constructed from a single crystal using super-alloys, and which are efficient, long-lasting, and also cope better with higher heat and stress. DRDO has the technology, but shaping it for high-powered jet fighter engines presents a different level of challenge.

The idea of both Safran and DRDO combining to develop a jet engine has been hanging fire for the past two years but now the Modi government has pushed DRDO to come up with a proposal which will soon be given green light at the apex level.

This 120-140 KN engine will power the twin engine advanced multi-role aircraft (AMCA), which will be developed and produced by Indian private sector with the Tata group, L &T and Adani Defence all ready to pitch in for the national effort.

PM ways pushed for an indigenous aircraft engine because this is an apex defence technology with significant civilian spin-offs.

While US, Russia, UK and France have the capacity to design, develop and produce own aircraft engines, even China still does not have its own aircraft engines and uses Russian or reverse engineered engines to power its front-line fighters. India’s GTRE tried to develop indigenous engine Kaveri but the project never took off.

While US defence major GE is supplying India with 212 F-404 engines (a deal for the second tranche of 113 engines is to be signed this month), it is also transferring technology of the heavier GE-414 engine but the technology transfer is only around 70 %.

India is looking at its trusted partner France to co-develop the engine as the US offer is often conditional and prone to strategic disruptions as in the past, the people said. They pointed out that France that did not sanction India for the Pokhran Shakti series of tests in 1998 and continued to provide state of the art INGPS systems for Indian missiles as well as spare parts for Mirage 2000 fighters.

With 73 KN M-88 Snecma engine powering the 36 Indian Rafale fighters, it is only logical that India also looks at Dassault for making 114 additional fighters in India for the multi-role combat program. The design, development and co-production of 110 KN engine will change the complexion of strategic game for India as the Indian Air Force will not be dependent on any third country to provide engine and fighters for power projection, the people said.

The Indian Navy will also get its twin engine deck based fighter with the more powerful Safran-GTRE jet engine for its aircraft carrier strike force. It is with the 120-140KN engine that India will power its front-line fighters in coming decades.