^^^^^^
Shivji, as usual, is right!!
It's a true stmt that we are atleast 2 gen behind contemporary military turbofans - broadly (and at a very high level) as follows:
1) Graduate to a turbofan tech of 1700deg C and 32 OPR resulting in TWR > 1.3 or 1.4 etc, with a reasonably "efficient" SPR
2) Move to the next step of "optimized" turbofan tech where-in you get the best of both the worlds of an efficient "cruising" attributes of a civilian turbofan and the other extreme of supreme TWR based "emergency" performance postponing the afterburning aspect as much as possible.
Problem is, to reach there we need to have a flying turbofan clocking high-thousands of hours of military engine raw performance. As the above two graduating steps are very empirically dependent on almost as aspects of rotary CFD, manufacturing tech and material tech - which nobody will share, and we can't "collect" these empirical parameters and derivations, until those number of hours operations are under the belt.
And for this IAF needs to be hugely supportive - and this current attitude of asking (copy-pasting actually) for the besttest of best performance parameters and, when it finally arrives, rejecting it because an advanced western engine design house has a better performing engine to offer, won't work.
Pls note, with Kaveri, we are trying to baseline the 360deg tech required for an advanced mitiary-turbofan (a F404 level, which, as Shivji rightly points out is 90s tech) - pls refer to an old post of mine to put these engine-gen aspects into perspective
here.
But once that technological maturity is obtained graduating to F414 level etc (and options pointed above) are atleast possible - on the other hand, if we continue to strive for a some other high-fi level, the perpetual R&D will continue at a snail’s pace, as those empirical parameters and derivations will not be known - and without which these advanced levels are impossible to achieve.
As an example, I've asked earlier and I ask again,
what exactly is the technological jump/advancement required for graduating for a 3rd gen DS turbine blade manufacturing tech to a 2nd Gen SCB blade tech? If you refer to the Kaveri thread, you'll notice there's a decade gap between the two.
Question is should we also require a decade to do the graduation - certainly not as,
1) Some level of publications of the basic R&Dfor this graduation is already available (so no need to re-invent the wheel)
2) In that decade, a lot of time was spent in collecting the above-mentioned empirical data and derivations (some, not all, of which can be obtained by choosing a suitable consulting partner).
3) There are other related/allied technological advancements happening which helps in directly "harnessing" them.
All of these (and many such interlinked aspects) are supposed to be outlined in the Kaveri thread - which I must shamelessly admit haven't contribited to for almost 2 mths now
. So much to think, research and write-about - so little bandwidth (Sigh!!)
But in all of these, the basic fundamental bottleneck remains i.e. no shortcut towards painstakingly long and persistent flight ops of a baselined engine the core technology of which is indigenously designed and, more importantly, manufactured.