26 December 2008 00:00 IST

Ravi Sharma

BANGALORE: Indian Air Force (IAF) is not keen on accepting an offer from the French company Snecma to join the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) in co-developing the long-delayed Kaveri turbofan combat aircraft engine.

The Kaveri engine, which has been under development at the GTRE for two decades at a cost of almost Rs.2,000 crore, is specifically being built to power the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft — Tejas.

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Of little use

A committee set up by the IAF has indicated to Air Headquarters that the Snecma offer will not meet the Air Force’s operational requirements, nor help India acquire the technological know-how to indigenously develop a combat engine.

Constituted in September under the chairmanship of Air Vice Marshal M. Matheswaran, to look at the Snecma offer, the committee had as its members representatives from the designers of the Tejas — the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), the manufacturers of the Tejas — the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification, and IAF officers posted at ADA, the National Flight Test Centre and the Aircraft Systems and Testing Establishment.

Not in India’s interest

Highly placed sources told The Hindu that the committee felt that the Snecma offer was not in the IAF and India’s interest primarily because the French were offering a fully developed engine accepting which would “compromise and even kill the efforts, however meagre” that Indian defence laboratories had made towards developing the indigenous Kaveri engine.

The offer would also not help India get a co-designed, co-developed engine but rather an engine under a licence production arrangement, and at a great financial cost.

Explained a member of the committee: “It would be better if GTRE and other laboratories working on the Kaveri brought the engine to its logical conclusion even if it took a few more years. At least we would have mastery over the core technology. This will be better than importing the French core, paying a lifelong royalty, but saying the Kaveri is our indigenous effort. Neither the French nor anybody else will give us the know-how on the core technology.”