Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

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Prem Kumar
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Prem Kumar »

Pratyush wrote:What is the real issue with Kaveri. Is it a lack of money, or poor material science, or poor application of available material sciences, or lack of trained human resources, that can do the design and construction of the engine it self
The real issue is that there is no silver bullet. What's needed to make a fighter jet engine is decades of R&D & sustained billions. Nothing less. The Americans & Russians paid that price. The Chinese are willing to. We should too. There are no shortcuts.

Was reading this excellent blog by Bernard Woolley on Tejas. Worth sharing a quote on jet engine development by Jeff Immelt
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE says, “If you could make something with 60 people in a garage, GE shouldn’t be doing it. But if you make a jet engine, there’s only like one and a half people in the world that can make a jet engine. And we are really good at that. If you want to compete with that, you’ve got to put yourself on a wayback machine and go back 25 years and invest $1 billion here for 25 years and then maybe, just maybe [emphasis mine], you’re going to be able to compete with us.”
https://medium.com/@BernardWoolley/debu ... 6be98f5487
chola
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chola »

Prem Kumar wrote:
Pratyush wrote:What is the real issue with Kaveri. Is it a lack of money, or poor material science, or poor application of available material sciences, or lack of trained human resources, that can do the design and construction of the engine it self
The real issue is that there is no silver bullet. What's needed to make a fighter jet engine is decades of R&D & sustained billions. Nothing less. The Americans & Russians paid that price. The Chinese are willing to. We should too. There are no shortcuts.

Was reading this excellent blog by Bernard Woolley on Tejas. Worth sharing a quote on jet engine development by Jeff Immelt
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE says, “If you could make something with 60 people in a garage, GE shouldn’t be doing it. But if you make a jet engine, there’s only like one and a half people in the world that can make a jet engine. And we are really good at that. If you want to compete with that, you’ve got to put yourself on a wayback machine and go back 25 years and invest $1 billion here for 25 years and then maybe, just maybe [emphasis mine], you’re going to be able to compete with us.”
https://medium.com/@BernardWoolley/debu ... 6be98f5487
Exactly. We have never put the investment into building a really industry around the Kaveri. Whatever weaknesses it had, the Kaveri was running for 57 hours over a decade ago in Russia. Money should have poured in to get it past the final mile. We shouldn't have to go to Russia. We should have invested in the facilities here. We should have multiple flying testbeds. We are spending billions for ephemeral phoren gear but balk at spending billions for a critical indigenous project that will permanently enhance our aerospace industry.
Indranil
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Indranil »

I have been thinking about the Honeywell's decision to not play hardball of on the F125IN. It cannot be about the surety of orders or volumes. They have stuck to supplying the engines for the HTT-40 which HAL will integrate, has lower engine volumes and whose orders where very uncertain till recently.

Is it because of HTFE-25?
csaurabh
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

chola wrote:
Prem Kumar wrote:
The real issue is that there is no silver bullet. What's needed to make a fighter jet engine is decades of R&D & sustained billions. Nothing less. The Americans & Russians paid that price. The Chinese are willing to. We should too. There are no shortcuts.

Was reading this excellent blog by Bernard Woolley on Tejas. Worth sharing a quote on jet engine development by Jeff Immelt



https://medium.com/@BernardWoolley/debu ... 6be98f5487
Exactly. We have never put the investment into building a really industry around the Kaveri. Whatever weaknesses it had, the Kaveri was running for 57 hours over a decade ago in Russia. Money should have poured in to get it past the final mile. We shouldn't have to go to Russia. We should have invested in the facilities here. We should have multiple flying testbeds. We are spending billions for ephemeral phoren gear but balk at spending billions for a critical indigenous project that will permanently enhance our aerospace industry.
One of the main things we don't pay attention to as a nation is machine, tooling and process development. We are concentrated on the final product onlee.. forgetting that the sophisticated machines that build the product are even greater challenges of engineering.
Just for example I don't think there are any machines in India to manufacture lasers, nor do we have a good idea of how to set one up. So we import the lasers onlee.. I sometimes wonder what we could have achieved as a nation if we had charismatic leaders like Vikram Sarabhai in charge of HMT in the 1960s and 70s instead of whatever doofuses were put there..
Prasad
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Prasad »

With the increase in laser based additive manufacturing, guess who are the major suppliers? Germans, Americans & Chinese.
dinesh_kimar
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by dinesh_kimar »

Looking at above posts, what I understand is the following:

Both Reliability of engine and power output is important. Here, the Reliability of engine is easier to achieve. All the manufacturers struggled to achieve target power , and reliability crept in later.

Now, our critical requirement for a light vanilla fighter, to replace Mig 21 used as recently as Balakote, can be addressed by the LCA.

The more modern French Mirage F1, weighs 7500 kg ( all up 10900 kg) and has a 69 KN ATAR engine, weighing 1700 kg.

Our LCA is 6500 kg (9500 kg) and engine weighing 1250 kg.


Kaveri produces between 72 KN (Saurabh Jha, VK Saraswat) and 75 KN (Dr.Sateesh Reddy, Mohan Rao).

So, the building blocks of a good fighter, better than the MiG 21 exists.

In earlier posts, I have mentioned that our efforts are similar to what existed in 1990-2000 timeframe, and certainly better than the 1960-1970 Mig tech we use at present.

The critical action required here was flight testing on Tejas/Mig 29.

Both DRDO chiefs Christopher and Sateesh Reddy did not push this hard enough, IMHO. This was the big mistake.

Once that aam janata see a Kaveri powered proto flying, it will garner unbeatable support and resources, with an understanding that this represents an improvement over our current 1960s inventory, and our first efforts are better than the General Electric J79 engine, and slightly less than the F-404.

My speculation is the DRDO did not persue Flight testing , which should have happened from Sept 2017 onwards. (Christopher had then assured that Kaveri will fly by Aero India 2019.)
Another chaiwallah incident related humorously and without an iota of proof is that NDA govt.starved funds of NAL and GTRE agencies, and existing projects were on hold for 2-3 years (Till September 2019).

Apparently situation under UPA was much better wrt funds
venkat_r
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by venkat_r »

Prem Kumar wrote:
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE says, “If you could make something with 60 people in a garage, GE shouldn’t be doing it. But if you make a jet engine, there’s only like one and a half people in the world that can make a jet engine. And we are really good at that. If you want to compete with that, you’ve got to put yourself on a wayback machine and go back 25 years and invest $1 billion here for 25 years and then maybe, just maybe [emphasis mine], you’re going to be able to compete with us.”
Ouch! Not sure who he was referring to, about 60 people in a garage - that is the reason why it is also a very heavily guarded secret and companies go to great lengths to not share anything even remotely that can give away any iota of their knowledge away.

That would be the second thing to learn, while GTRE tries to build the engine. Also India got to play to win in this, that is keep investing $$ at a constant pace in engine development for a long time with small milestones, and be happy with the small achievements like marine engines, UCAV engines, trainer engines, etc.. as there is simply no other way. Blowing hot and cold with the funding goes nowhere.

IAF seem to be on a sensible path, with choosing GE engines for MK-2 and asking to develop a local one for AMCA, which gives some time for DRDO, and hope they make some good descisions soon in that direction.

Also we need some institutional mechanism so that this does not become hot and cold when ministers and govt changes and not subjected to the whims of bureaucracy, evolve a comprehensive program like the missile program of yesteryears.
kit
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by kit »

venkat_r wrote:
Prem Kumar wrote:
Ouch! Not sure who he was referring to, about 60 people in a garage - that is the reason why it is also a very heavily guarded secret and companies go to great lengths to not share anything even remotely that can give away any iota of their knowledge away.

That would be the second thing to learn, while GTRE tries to build the engine. Also India got to play to win in this, that is keep investing $$ at a constant pace in engine development for a long time with small milestones, and be happy with the small achievements like marine engines, UCAV engines, trainer engines, etc.. as there is simply no other way. Blowing hot and cold with the funding goes nowhere.

IAF seem to be on a sensible path, with choosing GE engines for MK-2 and asking to develop a local one for AMCA, which gives some time for DRDO, and hope they make some good descisions soon in that direction.

Also we need some institutional mechanism so that this does not become hot and cold when ministers and govt changes and not subjected to the whims of bureaucracy, evolve a comprehensive program like the missile program of yesteryears.
Programs under mission mode and critical to national security goes directly under the office of PM and the budget is assured. Perhaps someting along those lines may be considered once all actors are in place.
chola
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chola »

csaurabh wrote:
chola wrote:
Exactly. We have never put the investment into building a really industry around the Kaveri. Whatever weaknesses it had, the Kaveri was running for 57 hours over a decade ago in Russia. Money should have poured in to get it past the final mile. We shouldn't have to go to Russia. We should have invested in the facilities here. We should have multiple flying testbeds. We are spending billions for ephemeral phoren gear but balk at spending billions for a critical indigenous project that will permanently enhance our aerospace industry.
One of the main things we don't pay attention to as a nation is machine, tooling and process development. We are concentrated on the final product onlee.. forgetting that the sophisticated machines that build the product are even greater challenges of engineering.
Just for example I don't think there are any machines in India to manufacture lasers, nor do we have a good idea of how to set one up. So we import the lasers onlee.. I sometimes wonder what we could have achieved as a nation if we had charismatic leaders like Vikram Sarabhai in charge of HMT in the 1960s and 70s instead of whatever doofuses were put there..
Aye! If we can solve that one the impact will be greater than just the aircraft industry but across ALL Indian manufacturing. Coupled with our lower labor costs, it would make us a global trade power.

Machine tooling is the foundation of modern manufacturing and really the divide between advanced and developing nations.

I can tell you from the Fortune 500 perspective that Western grip on commercial trade is built off of Japanese and German machine tooling. Even the Soviets, in the 1980s, needed Toshiba tools to create quiet propellers for their nuke fleet. (Created major issues with Unkil.)

Bravo for bringing this up. You think in more ambitious terms than I did on this one.
csaurabh
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

chola wrote:
csaurabh wrote:
One of the main things we don't pay attention to as a nation is machine, tooling and process development. We are concentrated on the final product onlee.. forgetting that the sophisticated machines that build the product are even greater challenges of engineering.
Just for example I don't think there are any machines in India to manufacture lasers, nor do we have a good idea of how to set one up. So we import the lasers onlee.. I sometimes wonder what we could have achieved as a nation if we had charismatic leaders like Vikram Sarabhai in charge of HMT in the 1960s and 70s instead of whatever doofuses were put there..
Aye! If we can solve that one the impact will be greater than just the aircraft industry but across ALL Indian manufacturing. Coupled with our lower labor costs, it would make us a global trade power.

Machine tooling is the foundation of modern manufacturing and really the divide between advanced and developing nations.

I can tell you from the Fortune 500 perspective that Western grip on commercial trade is built off of Japanese and German machine tooling. Even the Soviets, in the 1980s, needed Toshiba tools to create quiet propellers for their nuke fleet. (Created major issues with Unkil.)

Bravo for bringing this up. You think in more ambitious terms than I did on this one.
Chetak ji the manufacturing sector I have come across in India closely resembles a 'services' sector mindset. The two main things that are going on are 1) build-to-print ,ie. give us the design and we will make it if we have the specific machine, and 2) assembly related activities, putting things together with screw drivers and such like. This is not even factoring the 'rebranding' of foreign made equipment as indigenous ( eg. Renesas equipment being sold under the brand 'Quantum Zero', an allegedly Indian company ). Advanced manufacturing , machines and process development is barely in the minds of our people.

The discourse on mfg. in our country is no better, it is centered around land acquisition, providing electricity, roads, labour regulations and things like that. The engineering aspects of manufacturing sophisticated products is nowhere in sight still.

To give you an example here is a laser displacement sensor
https://www3.panasonic.biz/ac/ae/fasys/ ... /index.jsp
Do we have a plan for manufacturing such a sensor from the raw materials anywhere in the country. Will we even have one in 50 yrs from now. Btw sensors of this sort are used in 100s by HAL.

Here is another one - piezo transducers
https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9. ... p_id=10311
Don't think we will be manufacturing these anytime soon!
If you ask the geniuses in charge of HMT, HEC, etc. I don't think manufacturing LDS or PZTs will crack their top 100 in their list of concerns. They would be far more likely to be currying political favours, playing office politics, planning for 'consulting' after retirement, etc.

A lot of posts in this thread (and others) go like this: If only we have XYZ technology, we will be able to master aircraft engines. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding in the development of science and technology and the fact is that in many ways we are still a technologically backwards 3rd world nation. We are proud of our achievements such as Chandrayaan and LCA but don't seem to understand that all of these are made possible by importing a large percentage of manufacturing ecosystem from abroad. The presence of large numbers of Indians working in multi-national companies further confuses us- if 'we' are working for GE, and GE is making jet engines, surely it means that 'we' are making jet engines. Yes, I've come across this logic many times.
Rakesh
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Rakesh »

India, US suspend project for sharing jet engine technology, focus on drone warfare
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ne ... 750031.cms
Confirming that the fighter jet engine programme has been suspended, Ellen M Lord, undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, who was in the capital for a DTTI review meeting said there are other aspects of aircraft technology that can be worked on. “The original project is suspended right now. But we are talking about other potential engine working group items. We could not come to an understanding of what exportable technologies would be useful to the Indians and we did run into a challenge in terms of US export controls,” Lord said.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Rakesh »

https://twitter.com/SJha1618/status/1187595921221046274 ---> The India-US Joint Working Group on Jet Engine Technology under DTTI failed a long-time ago. Only, now is it being officially talked about. All it did was waste precious time when India could have moved forward on a different track.

https://twitter.com/SJha1618/status/1187239407796928512 ---> All this DTTI 'revitalization' is nothing but a realization that govt to govt multi-billion dollar US defence imports by India are no longer feasible, budget-wise. Hence, this newfound love for 'co-development' which has gone nowhere for the past 10 years. It's just optics.

https://twitter.com/unicAyu/status/1187605978117636096 ---> Technology is created through R&D. It is never begged or shared. Special note: Screwdriver-giri is NOT technology sharing.
chetak
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chetak »

csaurabh wrote:
chola wrote:
Aye! If we can solve that one the impact will be greater than just the aircraft industry but across ALL Indian manufacturing. Coupled with our lower labor costs, it would make us a global trade power.

Machine tooling is the foundation of modern manufacturing and really the divide between advanced and developing nations.

I can tell you from the Fortune 500 perspective that Western grip on commercial trade is built off of Japanese and German machine tooling. Even the Soviets, in the 1980s, needed Toshiba tools to create quiet propellers for their nuke fleet. (Created major issues with Unkil.)

Bravo for bringing this up. You think in more ambitious terms than I did on this one.
Chetak ji the manufacturing sector I have come across in India closely resembles a 'services' sector mindset. The two main things that are going on are 1) build-to-print ,ie. give us the design and we will make it if we have the specific machine, and 2) assembly related activities, putting things together with screw drivers and such like. This is not even factoring the 'rebranding' of foreign made equipment as indigenous ( eg. Renesas equipment being sold under the brand 'Quantum Zero', an allegedly Indian company ). Advanced manufacturing , machines and process development is barely in the minds of our people.

The discourse on mfg. in our country is no better, it is centered around land acquisition, providing electricity, roads, labour regulations and things like that. The engineering aspects of manufacturing sophisticated products is nowhere in sight still.

To give you an example here is a laser displacement sensor
https://www3.panasonic.biz/ac/ae/fasys/ ... /index.jsp
Do we have a plan for manufacturing such a sensor from the raw materials anywhere in the country. Will we even have one in 50 yrs from now. Btw sensors of this sort are used in 100s by HAL.

Here is another one - piezo transducers
https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9. ... p_id=10311
Don't think we will be manufacturing these anytime soon!
If you ask the geniuses in charge of HMT, HEC, etc. I don't think manufacturing LDS or PZTs will crack their top 100 in their list of concerns. They would be far more likely to be currying political favours, playing office politics, planning for 'consulting' after retirement, etc.

A lot of posts in this thread (and others) go like this: If only we have XYZ technology, we will be able to master aircraft engines. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding in the development of science and technology and the fact is that in many ways we are still a technologically backwards 3rd world nation. We are proud of our achievements such as Chandrayaan and LCA but don't seem to understand that all of these are made possible by importing a large percentage of manufacturing ecosystem from abroad. The presence of large numbers of Indians working in multi-national companies further confuses us- if 'we' are working for GE, and GE is making jet engines, surely it means that 'we' are making jet engines. Yes, I've come across this logic many times.

I work with some of these guys.

Its all about the risks that they will not take and without taking the risk they want "orders" from which they want to make profits that will suffice them for a number of generations.

prices quoted are arbitrary and profit margins are rapacious.

The larger guys like well known tech companies enter into a JV or a tech support agreement and they follow the goras orders blindly without ever questioning why and they also lure engineers and technicians away from the PSUs but kick up a huge fuss if another company does the same to them.

quality control is a foreign concept.

CNC machines are mostly imported and well supported in India. They also have application engineers who work closely with these companies to exploit the features of these machines fully.

But it is unnerving that smaller countries like SL and malaysia have far superior manufacturing facilities and they are also much more professional in their approach. I personally know of a few SL companies whose parts are accepted directly into the airbus production setup without the need for any inspection at the airbus end because these SL companies have been given the green channel status by airbus. Such certification is not easy to come by.


our manpower is predatory and will change jobs at the drop of a hat if paid just a bit more by a competitor

at this time it may be more viable to import stuff like LDS or PZTs than manufacturing here. just saying onlee.

orders for defence items are few and far between and "investments" have to be made to get orders. Lower level corruption has become big these days.

you would be surprised at how much cheeni mal gets pushed into the PSU pipeline by the unscrupulous supply chain guys.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

at this time it may be more viable to import stuff like LDS or PZTs than manufacturing here. just saying onlee.
Forget about those, we don't even have good quality soldering iron in India, a technology over 100 yrs old. We import them from Weller's at 16000-25000 Rs. each. Even something as basic as power tools we are nowhere. I recently bought my cordless drill from DeWalt.

Pvt. companies not investing into RnD is really dragging us down.

Academia has also been a huge failure in India, the fixation on Western journal papers as the academic output has resulted in mostly theoretical, Ivory-tower shut-ins who cannot be trusted with any RnD. The incentives of Indian academia don't reward national technology development at all and there are some valiant efforts here and there but no systemic scheme.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by darshhan »

csaurabh wrote:
at this time it may be more viable to import stuff like LDS or PZTs than manufacturing here. just saying onlee.
Forget about those, we don't even have good quality soldering iron in India, a technology over 100 yrs old. We import them from Weller's at 16000-25000 Rs. each. Even something as basic as power tools we are nowhere. I recently bought my cordless drill from DeWalt.

Pvt. companies not investing into RnD is really dragging us down.

Academia has also been a huge failure in India, the fixation on Western journal papers as the academic output has resulted in mostly theoretical, Ivory-tower shut-ins who cannot be trusted with any RnD. The incentives of Indian academia don't reward national technology development at all and there are some valiant efforts here and there but no systemic scheme.
Most of them probably don't even know how to do R&D. And I am talking of PHD level guys. Standards of Indian academia are extremely abysymal.
chola
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chola »

csaurabh wrote:
at this time it may be more viable to import stuff like LDS or PZTs than manufacturing here. just saying onlee.
Forget about those, we don't even have good quality soldering iron in India, a technology over 100 yrs old. We import them from Weller's at 16000-25000 Rs. each. Even something as basic as power tools we are nowhere. I recently bought my cordless drill from DeWalt.

Pvt. companies not investing into RnD is really dragging us down.

Academia has also been a huge failure in India, the fixation on Western journal papers as the academic output has resulted in mostly theoretical, Ivory-tower shut-ins who cannot be trusted with any RnD. The incentives of Indian academia don't reward national technology development at all and there are some valiant efforts here and there but no systemic scheme.
Saurabh ji, then what do we do? I appreciate and understand the dilemma we face with these basic foundations of advanced manufacturing. But this is a national wide structural issue that cannot be fixed in time for the Kaveri or any engine we need to design for say the AMCA and beyond.

We will have to depend on foreign CNC machines and other tooling for now. But even if we to import those, we can still set up an manufacturing and testing infrastructure around the Kaveri no?

Even if we need to depend on phoren machines to maje our engine the final product is still ours. We done anything to build that support infrastructure.

But before manufacturing, there is testing and experimentation. Going to Russia to test is probably as inefficient as it sounds.

A copy of the Il-76 Gromov testbed the Kaveri flight tested on a decade ago was bought by Cheen.
Image

Cheen didn't bother building their own testbed, they bought one from Russia so their WS-10 and other projects can progress more quickly.

Imagine if we had one for the Kaveri. Where would we be today?

I don't might mind investing in imports that allow us to design, test and make the end product. I much rather invest there than importing the end product itself.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chetak »

@chola ji,

I don't wish to rain on anyone's parade but our problems are more in the HR area and less in the facilities area. As we had access to the russki testbed then, we still have the same access today. In fact, we may now have easier access today to the testbeds in multiple countries, an option that we did not have then.

The hans send out their best and brightest to foreign universities and thereafter to work in high tech cutting edge companies with the full surety that these guys, without fail, WILL RETURN when told to.

these guys always return home because their families are not allowed to go out of china and if these guys do not return back to work in chinese institutions, consequences swiftly follow and no need to go into details gory here. All this is backed by a stupendously efficient and robustly productive industrial espionage system operating on a global scale.

The hans easily access any and every educational institution in the world because of their political and economic clout. They simply cannot be denied. We have no such access or even clout and sadly, nor do we have people of similar caliber whom we can blackmail into returning, what with being a "democracy" and all.

every alternate day some moron comes up with a list of the best 100/200/300 institutions in the world and a mere sorry handful of Indian institutions make the list, almost always nearer the bottom of all such lists.

why haven't we returned to the flying testbed with the kaveri after we last used it more than a decade ago. The answer is obvious. We have nothing to test.

We seem to have done all that we could for the present and are now looking for help to proceed further.

Don't take this the wrong way but pray tell, why do we need a horrendously expensive white elephant flying testbed.

Let us first mobilize the HR side as best we can and make sure that we indeed have something to test.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

chola wrote: We will have to depend on foreign CNC machines and other tooling for now. But even if we to import those, we can still set up an manufacturing and testing infrastructure around the Kaveri no?

Even if we need to depend on phoren machines to maje our engine the final product is still ours. We done anything to build that support infrastructure.

But before manufacturing, there is testing and experimentation. Going to Russia to test is probably as inefficient as it sounds.

A copy of the Il-76 Gromov testbed the Kaveri flight tested on a decade ago was bought by Cheen.
Image

Cheen didn't bother building their own testbed, they bought one from Russia so their WS-10 and other projects can progress more quickly.

Imagine if we had one for the Kaveri. Where would we be today?

I don't might mind investing in imports that allow us to design, test and make the end product. I much rather invest there than importing the end product itself.
We are already doing that. For example the DRDO's Netra AWACS aircraft has a base aeroplane from Embraer on which they have mounted their radars.
When an indigenous aircraft of the same size gets ready they can make it fully indigenous.

So, no problem per se with importing the stuff needed for manufacturing and testing.

The devil is in the details. When you import something, not only do you have to pay huge cash (+maintenance), you also cannot change anything ( unless you request them, and who knows when they will get around to it ). And this is the real problem with that approach.

I myself work in such an area. Let us say you import an equipment which imparts 3.6kJ to a material in order to show some results. But to get the results which you want, you need 4.8kJ. But, boo-hoo, you can't change anything, even if it is fairly simple. without voiding the warranty/contract.

Not to mention, your understanding of the system is quite limited when you have a black box. A lot of our equipment is like that.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chola »

chetak wrote:@chola ji,

I don't wish to rain on anyone's parade but our problems are more in the HR area and less in the facilities area. As we had access to the russki testbed then, we still have the same access today. In fact, we may now have easier access today to the testbeds in multiple countries, an option that we did not have then.

...

why haven't we returned to the flying testbed with the kaveri after we last used it more than a decade ago. The answer is obvious. We have nothing to test.

We seem to have done all that we could for the present and are now looking for help to proceed further.

Don't take this the wrong way but pray tell, why do we need a horrendously expensive white elephant flying testbed.
But Saar, you said you don't want to rain on my parade. But you always do so!! But again I always appreciate your hard edged opinions and reasoning.

Yes, it would be a white elephant if there is nothing to test. But I still believe if we had a testbed at hand we would be able to test in smaller and more rapid increments than saving up changes that one can then go to the beancounters and ask for a trip to Gromov. Maybe you are right and it is just me who thinks it is just the baboos withholding funds. Maybe it is easier to just assign blame to them.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chola »

csaurabh wrote: The devil is in the details. When you import something, not only do you have to pay huge cash (+maintenance), you also cannot change anything ( unless you request them, and who knows when they will get around to it ). And this is the real problem with that approach.

I myself work in such an area. Let us say you import an equipment which imparts 3.6kJ to a material in order to show some results. But to get the results which you want, you need 4.8kJ. But, boo-hoo, you can't change anything, even if it is fairly simple. without voiding the warranty/contract.

Not to mention, your understanding of the system is quite limited when you have a black box. A lot of our equipment is like that.
Thanks for your reply and your relating your experience, Saurabh ji.

So my question is what now? Can we wait for home ground tools industry to mature before we try again with a new engine? That sounds too far into the future.

Should we just pony up the money to the French and bring in their M88 core to help us bridge the gap for now? Do we have a choice? Unless we are satisfied with just importing F414s.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chetak »

chola wrote:
csaurabh wrote: The devil is in the details. When you import something, not only do you have to pay huge cash (+maintenance), you also cannot change anything ( unless you request them, and who knows when they will get around to it ). And this is the real problem with that approach.

I myself work in such an area. Let us say you import an equipment which imparts 3.6kJ to a material in order to show some results. But to get the results which you want, you need 4.8kJ. But, boo-hoo, you can't change anything, even if it is fairly simple. without voiding the warranty/contract.

Not to mention, your understanding of the system is quite limited when you have a black box. A lot of our equipment is like that.
Thanks for your reply and your relating your experience, Saurabh ji.

So my question is what now? Can we wait for home ground tools industry to mature before we try again with a new engine? That sounds too far into the future.

Should we just pony up the money to the French and bring in their M88 core to help us bridge the gap for now? Do we have a choice? Unless we are satisfied with just importing F414s.
The F414 is a landmine that is politically sensitive to untimely detonation, especially in times of maximum need.

the expiry date on such products is never mentioned.

A new POTUS can easily mean a new policy that may impact us like a savage jab to the solar plexus. The US deep state has never been India friendly ever. Since 1947, they have always preferred the immorally pragmatic, corrupted, transactional and "for sale" paki establishment which mirrors their own national philosophy as demonstrated so openly and ably in their saudi + gulf relationships.

the amerikis have been at the vanguard of engine technology denial to India for decades now.

Only ISRO (and DAE) have so far managed to wriggle out of their deadly embrace.

this military jet engine is proving a hard nut to crack with a cartel of countries ganging up on us to ensure that we do not make any progress in this domain.
Last edited by chetak on 29 Oct 2019 11:56, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Yagnasri »

Even if they are our "all weather friend" they will not give these kind of sensitive and critical tech to us. No one will. So either we spend money, time and effort or continue to be exposed to blackmail.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

chola wrote: So my question is what now? Can we wait for home ground tools industry to mature before we try again with a new engine? That sounds too far into the future.

Should we just pony up the money to the French and bring in their M88 core to help us bridge the gap for now? Do we have a choice? Unless we are satisfied with just importing F414s.
There is no easy answer. Orgs. like HMT and HEC which were supposed to have developed machine tools in India are basically a joke ( minus a few exceptions ) - and these were set up even before ISRO (for comparison!). There are some good private industries and startups coming up, but they are few and far between. And will take time to come up.

I don't have any first hand knowledge about what's going on in GTRE. I have heard rumours that the top mgmt of GTRE are ITI-passed diploma holders. Sounds absurd, but that might explain the problems. An active aircraft engine program would be having regular testing, so if we have nothing to test for the last 10 years, that indicates some very deep issues.

Is an aircraft engine really all that more difficult than a cryogenic turbo pump and combustion chamber? We do the latter.
A side note: A CIA conspiracy to frame ISRO scientists in a 'spy plot' derailed our cryo tech for a decade. Wonder if something similar is going on in aero engines as well.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by ramana »

Yagnasri wrote:Even if they are our "all weather friend" they will not give these kind of sensitive and critical tech to us. No one will. So either we spend money, time and effort or continue to be exposed to blackmail.
Can we give this doom and gloom a rest.

Its being worked on at the highest levels.

Previous govts never wanted to fund jet engine technology even when it was available for little money claiming its too costly and limited use.

Now its realized its a lynch pin technology.

BTW none of the scientist/air force community made an effective case for it.

Air Force was always can import from some body.

Scientist community would promise bleeding edge forget cutting edge even when they did not have blunt edge technology mastery.
They wanted to do research and not technology.

Now all that is being squared away I hope.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by ramana »

csaurabh wrote:
chola wrote: So my question is what now? Can we wait for home ground tools industry to mature before we try again with a new engine? That sounds too far into the future.

Should we just pony up the money to the French and bring in their M88 core to help us bridge the gap for now? Do we have a choice? Unless we are satisfied with just importing F414s.
There is no easy answer. Orgs. like HMT and HEC which were supposed to have developed machine tools in India are basically a joke ( minus a few exceptions ) - and these were set up even before ISRO (for comparison!). There are some good private industries and startups coming up, but they are few and far between. And will take time to come up.

I don't have any first hand knowledge about what's going on in GTRE. I have heard rumours that the top mgmt of GTRE are ITI-passed diploma holders. Sounds absurd, but that might explain the problems. An active aircraft engine program would be having regular testing, so if we have nothing to test for the last 10 years, that indicates some very deep issues.

Is an aircraft engine really all that more difficult than a cryogenic turbo pump and combustion chamber? We do the latter.
A side note: A CIA conspiracy to frame ISRO scientists in a 'spy plot' derailed our cryo tech for a decade. Wonder if something similar is going on in aero engines as well.
That is a lie. Many of GTRE are Phd Engineers.
But emphasis is on Research not on technology.
Add to that the funding by MoD/DRDO is deliberately held at very low levels.
No engine can be developed for that little funds.
its a marvel that the Kaveri did develop that much thrust.

And add to that a hostile press who cant design a village bullock cart give advice to GTRE.

For example press thinks screech is noise problem.
Any way said too much.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Indranil »

GTRE is definitely not short of degrees!
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Post by Aditya_V »

What it is short of is funding, an Indian Industrial ecosystem supplying aviation parts and equipment, Test bed infrastructure on the Ground and in the AIr. Having to fly Russia to test an engine is like asking someone with an external vested Interest to correct your school papers, they will always give the results late with lesser marks.

Simple facts lost on Indian society as a whole. As a nation we value Sakuni mentality - i.e being cunning and worldly wise over hard work, this is seen in simple things like our road discipline, movies etc.

Hard work and discipline, innovation by the other person is never appreciated.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

ramana wrote: That is a lie. Many of GTRE are Phd Engineers.
But emphasis is on Research not on technology
Oops. My bad.

Anyway one more thing I wanted to point out is our constant and almost complete reliance on foreign engineering software.
We think that manufacturing hardware is the only problem, but modern engg. is highly reliant on software, algorithms and mathematics.
Despite our 'reputation' as 'IT supapowah!1!', we are hardly anywhere when it comes to developing engg. software. ( Unless counting MNCs )
ISRO for one is a big importer of engineering softwares.
This can be nullified to some extent by using open source, but those are never of the best quality.

I'll give you one example, let's say I want to solve an ILP optimization problem ( ILP = Integer Linear Programming ). What kind of solver should you use? Well if you want the best, you probably want something like IBM's CPlex Studio. But ofc if you have no money, you make do with some open source like python's MIP solver. ( Not to mention, software can be sanctioned as well ).

Compared to traditional softwares, engg. softwares involve a high level understanding of engineering mathematics, which is typically the domain of academia. But, Indian academia is just too disorganized and too incompetent to carry out such activities. Now technically, it is just possible that somewhere in our large country there is a small team of mathematicians and programmers working to develop something like IBM's CPlex. But in all my experience (at the very best institutes), I have never come across such people, and if indeed they do exist they would be impossible to contact.

DRDO's CAIR lab are the only ones I have encountered who show an awareness about the importance of algorithms and software. I wonder when this understanding will filter through to the top decision makers!
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chetak »

Indranil wrote:GTRE is definitely not short of degrees!
Maybe this is not the situation obtaining now and the gentleman hasn't updated.

However, in the earlier days of DRDO and across labs, there were many in the top echelon who were just diploma holders.

This was true as late as the early 90s for sure.

I am guessing that it may have petered out, at most, by the end of the 90s, taking into account, retirement and other natural attrition factors.

But as Ramana ji correctly said,
But emphasis is on Research not on technology.
what is the use of such a largely impractical approach. The need of the hour is technology and its critical application to produce much desired results.

Almost all the masters and Ph.D. qualifications in DRDO have been obtained at the expense of the GoI and there has to be some measure of control and direction in specifying subjects and topics so that the objectives of the lab are taken forward and the overall path of the DRDO is oriented towards organic and self realized goals.

Even a very cursory scrutiny of the grades obtained by a majority of such GoI paid for candidates after graduation from "elite" institutions will tell a very sorry tale indeed.

Research in pure sciences is generally the prerogative of some well known and reputable institutions who have been doing excellent work in theoretical studies. Such institutions are not usually counted in the DRDO domain and vice versa.

DRDO is more of a technology development organization and is meant to cater largely to practical applications in critical and diverse fields with the ultimate aim of successful technology transfer to local industries to foster, indigenize and develop a successful MIC.

Yes indeed, in the DRDO, there may well be a very small collection of the truly gifted individuals who excel in the pure sciences. Nurture them, by all means, but when are we going to get on with the practical and the applications side, producing an output commensurate with the huge investments already made and investments that are being made, even as we speak.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by JayS »

csaurabh wrote:
ramana wrote: That is a lie. Many of GTRE are Phd Engineers.
But emphasis is on Research not on technology
Oops. My bad.

Anyway one more thing I wanted to point out is our constant and almost complete reliance on foreign engineering software.
We think that manufacturing hardware is the only problem, but modern engg. is highly reliant on software, algorithms and mathematics.
Despite our 'reputation' as 'IT supapowah!1!', we are hardly anywhere when it comes to developing engg. software. ( Unless counting MNCs )
ISRO for one is a big importer of engineering softwares.
This can be nullified to some extent by using open source, but those are never of the best quality.

I'll give you one example, let's say I want to solve an ILP optimization problem ( ILP = Integer Linear Programming ). What kind of solver should you use? Well if you want the best, you probably want something like IBM's CPlex Studio. But ofc if you have no money, you make do with some open source like python's MIP solver. ( Not to mention, software can be sanctioned as well ).

Compared to traditional softwares, engg. softwares involve a high level understanding of engineering mathematics, which is typically the domain of academia. But, Indian academia is just too disorganized and too incompetent to carry out such activities. Now technically, it is just possible that somewhere in our large country there is a small team of mathematicians and programmers working to develop something like IBM's CPlex. But in all my experience (at the very best institutes), I have never come across such people, and if indeed they do exist they would be impossible to contact.

DRDO's CAIR lab are the only ones I have encountered who show an awareness about the importance of algorithms and software. I wonder when this understanding will filter through to the top decision makers!
your last few posts seem like you are just shooting in dark.

Indian academia definitely has enough depth to deliver such technologies. It is not in academia's nature to be organized and focused on only certain things. They by nature tend to be explorers. Even a negative result is considered learning, many times research lines with no visible near term applications are pursued. Academia is there to provide the options across the spectrum and they work everything from advanced maturity technologies to complete fantasies for current time. Its the top level programs which decide the focus and fund academic research accordingly and drive it in certain direction. I have seen examples, even in US, professors along with their research groups completely switching line of research after years of hard work, due to switch in the funding availability. Indian academia barely gets a fraction of money that their counter parts receive in other countries.

There is no point in lamenting over lack of enabling technologies. Other countries have funded development of those technologies as a top down approach by pouring money in big projects which trickle down ultimately in all layers of technology development. Just look at the defense and space funding by US, USSR, EU 3-4 decades after WW2. Massive numbers. Just as an example, UK was investing over 10% of its GDP in Defense related activities. Space budget in US alone in heydays of Moon Landing mission was ~4% of US GDP. Those massive funds have resulted in subcidizing technology for their private industry and now they can sustain incremental technology gains on own funds (still their govts give significant amount of funds for research). Even we have tried that with projects like LCA. But we have not done enough. France sunk 50B in Rafale program which basically went into development of all sorts of technology right from CAD sw to hi-end technologies like AESA. Bottom up approach will never work for enabling technology development with steep technology barriers and now the economic barriers are also in play. So no point in expecting technologies like some SW or machine tool will develop on its own without targets set from the very top, with focused funding, subsidizing technology for everyone so that the cost of the enabling tech products remain commercially competitive.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by nam »

DRDO does not do pure science and in fact it should not. It is not a university.

However DRDO has been funding projects in IIT and IISC for science and tech which it can use. DRDO may not have all PhD, however wouldn't the ones getting the funding are definitely highly qualified.

GAN and metamaterial are two areas I can think of which received DRDO funding 10years back.

Jet Engines are not just material science projects. It is iteration of experience gained. This iteration cost money, lots of it.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by nam »

Just to give an example of how Europeans spend money on tech. A large euro company, I know of, has been trying to build a silly ecommerce site to sell its product.

It has been doing it for the past 10 years, still not able to achieve it to its satisfaction. It has done 3 iteration already, spending more than 3-4 millions everytime.

They don't care about the money spend, but they want a solution they can own and works how they want.

All for a ecommerce portal!
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by JayS »

Brar has shared a slide about USAF's planned expenditure in International Mil Aviation thread. Just look at the numbers there. The Classified projects in will see $228 B invested in it, easily 2x of rest of the publicly known capex. Where is all that money going..? A large chunk of it is going in developing blue sky technology and systems for future. Massive investment. And this is just USAF alone.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chetak »

JayS wrote:Brar has shared a slide about USAF's planned expenditure in International Mil Aviation thread. Just look at the numbers there. The Classified projects in will see $228 B invested in it, easily 2x of rest of the publicly known capex. Where is all that money going..? A large chunk of it is going in developing blue sky technology and systems for future. Massive investment. And this is just USAF alone.
That's ok for the US.

Given their tax payer base and their tax collection efficiencies and the total tax collected that is ginormous, they have the revenue to do this. Plus, and most importantly, they print dollars at will.

they have their global reach to sustain and maintain.

they have their global ambitions and objectives to nurture, further and spread.

They need the tools to do all this.

and this is the unimaginable power that they wield:

One rogue president, bucking the established system, so carefully gamed by the hans, over the decades after nixon, has put the fear of god into the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and has succeeded in nudging the han economy into a potential tailspin.

no more "ugly american" taunts as very real fears have gripped the snooty, condescending, haughty and ever freeloading EU sophisticates.

whereas, we are, in many ways, still recovering from the savage after effects of colonization and the seeds of communal dissension sown by the maliciously meddling britshits.

Perforce, our priorities have to be very different as far as military spending goes and the pace of defence development will also take a hit because of the constraints forced on the planners by competing calls on the already meager resources.

Given all this, we seem to have done fairly OK, considering all things. Patience will pay.

The pace will pick up, going forward but will never ever match either the US or china.
Last edited by chetak on 31 Oct 2019 16:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by JayS »

chetak wrote:
JayS wrote:Brar has shared a slide about USAF's planned expenditure in International Mil Aviation thread. Just look at the numbers there. The Classified projects in will see $228 B invested in it, easily 2x of rest of the publicly known capex. Where is all that money going..? A large chunk of it is going in developing blue sky technology and systems for future. Massive investment. And this is just USAF alone.
That's ok for the US.

Given their tax payer base and their tax collection efficiencies and the total tax collected that is ginormous, they have the revenue to do this. Plus, and most importantly, they print dollars at will.

they have their global reach to sustain and maintain.

they have their global ambitions and objectives to nurture, further and spread.

They need the tools to do all this.

and this is the unimaginable power that they wield:

One rogue president, bucking the established system, so carefully gamed by the hans, over the decades after nixon, has put the fear of god into the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and has succeeded in nudging the han economy into a potential tailspin.

no more "ugly american" taunts as very real fears have gripped the snooty, condescending, haughty and ever freeloading EU sophisticates.

whereas, we are, in many ways, still recovering from the savage after effects of colonization and the seeds of communal dissension sown by the maliciously meddling britshits.

Perforce, our priorities have to be very different as far as military spending goes and the pace of defence development will also take a hit because of the constraints forced on the planners by competing calls on the already meager resources.

given all this, we seem to have done fairly OK, considering all things.

The pace will pick up, going forward but will never ever match either the US or china.
That cannot be an excuse for us not doing more than what we are doing today. No one is saying we should spend hundreds of Billions of dollars. But even in terms of % of GDP our defense R&D expenditure is negligibly small. Even as % of Defense budget its only 5-6% compared to 10-12% minimum (publicly known) by most countries of relevance. We in fact need to spend more than them, but we are not even matching. Take our 4 metro cities and the money wasted there in substandard roads alone would easily surpass DRDO's yearly budget. Just cleaning one metro city's governance could fund entire DRDO. Resources are not meagre but the utilization is terrible. Roads in my childhood used to last 5-6yrs without repair, as they should, now they cannot see one Monsoon. that's 10x reduction of effective usage of funds. Image the wastage of funds nationwide. Just an example. Just couple of clean Metro city municipal corps can double DRDO's budget easily. We cannot blame everything on others for this mess.

Anyway its OT.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by chetak »

Given all our economic constraints and electoral compulsions and the preponderance of different interests and diverse interest groups in various states and cities, one would be very safe in assuming that the funding wise, DRDO is fairly low on the totem pole as far as priorities are concerned.

Our nuclear weapons have actually made us quite complacent on defence spending. Many projects have lost their urgency and with it, their all important funding.

The average man on the street would be hard pressed to recall even the name DRDO.

ISRO yes, nuclear reactors & BARC yes, DRDO not so much.

Maybe the DRDO should project themselves on national TV, just like the IA, IN and the IAF do for recruitment drives. There are no interviews, no panel discussions on LSTV and RSTV highlighting the DRDO's achievements and future plans. They have no instant recall icon like APJ Abdul Kalam to showcase their organization.

The LCA project, for instance, could be glamorized on TV like a snazzy documentary. That would be pretty interesting. In reality, it is already a glamorous project, just waiting to be leveraged by the DRDO.

Why not invite Modi ji to fly in the LCA in Dilli, to save his time as well as better the chances of him saying yes.

Sadly, there is not much interest in the DRDO, except in some pockets of the MoD and maybe the PM and a few concerned cabinet ministers.

BTW, funding for DRDO has to come from the MoD only.

Savings on ditch digging from ranchi or choice of honest contractors in bombay resulting in lower spends on pothole filling will never ever reach the DRDO, no matter how tortured and complex the route maybe. That's not how things work in India.

As you say, this is OT.

my last on this.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by csaurabh »

JayS wrote:
your last few posts seem like you are just shooting in dark.

Indian academia definitely has enough depth to deliver such technologies. It is not in academia's nature to be organized and focused on only certain things. They by nature tend to be explorers. Even a negative result is considered learning, many times research lines with no visible near term applications are pursued. Academia is there to provide the options across the spectrum and they work everything from advanced maturity technologies to complete fantasies for current time. Its the top level programs which decide the focus and fund academic research accordingly and drive it in certain direction. I have seen examples, even in US, professors along with their research groups completely switching line of research after years of hard work, due to switch in the funding availability. Indian academia barely gets a fraction of money that their counter parts receive in other countries.

There is no point in lamenting over lack of enabling technologies. Other countries have funded development of those technologies as a top down approach by pouring money in big projects which trickle down ultimately in all layers of technology development. Just look at the defense and space funding by US, USSR, EU 3-4 decades after WW2. Massive numbers. Just as an example, UK was investing over 10% of its GDP in Defense related activities. Space budget in US alone in heydays of Moon Landing mission was ~4% of US GDP. Those massive funds have resulted in subcidizing technology for their private industry and now they can sustain incremental technology gains on own funds (still their govts give significant amount of funds for research). Even we have tried that with projects like LCA. But we have not done enough. France sunk 50B in Rafale program which basically went into development of all sorts of technology right from CAD sw to hi-end technologies like AESA. Bottom up approach will never work for enabling technology development with steep technology barriers and now the economic barriers are also in play. So no point in expecting technologies like some SW or machine tool will develop on its own without targets set from the very top, with focused funding, subsidizing technology for everyone so that the cost of the enabling tech products remain commercially competitive.
Well I try to be not too pessimistic. But the idea that Indian academia is 'competent' simply doesn't match my personal experiences.
There is an ongoing program for the development of FEM software at ISRO. One mathematics faculty asked for a 'collaboration' , made fancy promises, and as expected palmed it off to a phd student after giving them some code he copied off the internet and asking her to 'improve' on it. ( passing it off as his own code ). And the communication from the other side was pretty inconsistent too.. mathematicians not understanding programmers, programmers not understanding mathematics. Results are as you'd expect. And this one doesn't even involve funding. Many other horror stories are there, such ISRO funding some IIT prof for 2 cr. and spending it all on fancy equipment to land a journal paper, while not solving their problem. Bitter lessons learned from such experiences. Nowadays the academics would need to go through a strict vetting process to get any funding, as a result of their overall incompetence and untrustworthiness in contributing to national interests.
Anyway this is all OT. my last post on the topic.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by SriKumar »

I think while your individual data points are fine, generalizing them across the entire domain is unnecessary, and leads to 'WhatWuzDat?!' moments. As for the software development you are talking about above, it has nothing to do with IT (Bangalore/Hyd will not be able to help). It is usually the domain of civil engg or mechanical engg. and the people who can do justice to it are not mathematicians per se, though there is some level of mathematics involved but does not require a specialist math dept faculty. In fact they may not appreciate certain aspects of its practical usage and makes it less useful. Commercial codes in this domain, if you check when they were launched, and their history prior to commercial launch, required several 100 man-years of effort (actually 10X that). It is not going to happen with a 2-year project between a faculty of a top-reputed institute+grad student- may be something extremely narrow scope and therefore not of broad use. And with all else needing money, just like the reliance on the GE engine, they have to rely on foreign software, which of course, can and has been embargoed.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by ramana »

SriKumar, Early during development of Finite element method in late 1970s, IITM was quite good. But there was no plan to develop a IITM analysis tool like STRUDL or similar programs.
Most of the teachers were working to get a fellowship abroad and took of half way through courses.

And that was when KAV Pandalai was the Director.

Each prof had his own deck of programs to use for consultation work.
India lost a good chance to develop such software on mainframe and then port it over.
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Re: Kaveri & Aero-Engine: News & Discussion

Post by Picklu »

csaurabh wrote:
JayS wrote:
your last few posts seem like you are just shooting in dark.

Indian academia definitely has enough depth to deliver such technologies. It is not in academia's nature to be organized and focused on only certain things. They by nature tend to be explorers. Even a negative result is considered learning, many times research lines with no visible near term applications are pursued. Academia is there to provide the options across the spectrum and they work everything from advanced maturity technologies to complete fantasies for current time. Its the top level programs which decide the focus and fund academic research accordingly and drive it in certain direction. I have seen examples, even in US, professors along with their research groups completely switching line of research after years of hard work, due to switch in the funding availability. Indian academia barely gets a fraction of money that their counter parts receive in other countries.

There is no point in lamenting over lack of enabling technologies. Other countries have funded development of those technologies as a top down approach by pouring money in big projects which trickle down ultimately in all layers of technology development. Just look at the defense and space funding by US, USSR, EU 3-4 decades after WW2. Massive numbers. Just as an example, UK was investing over 10% of its GDP in Defense related activities. Space budget in US alone in heydays of Moon Landing mission was ~4% of US GDP. Those massive funds have resulted in subcidizing technology for their private industry and now they can sustain incremental technology gains on own funds (still their govts give significant amount of funds for research). Even we have tried that with projects like LCA. But we have not done enough. France sunk 50B in Rafale program which basically went into development of all sorts of technology right from CAD sw to hi-end technologies like AESA. Bottom up approach will never work for enabling technology development with steep technology barriers and now the economic barriers are also in play. So no point in expecting technologies like some SW or machine tool will develop on its own without targets set from the very top, with focused funding, subsidizing technology for everyone so that the cost of the enabling tech products remain commercially competitive.
Well I try to be not too pessimistic. But the idea that Indian academia is 'competent' simply doesn't match my personal experiences.
There is an ongoing program for the development of FEM software at ISRO. One mathematics faculty asked for a 'collaboration' , made fancy promises, and as expected palmed it off to a phd student after giving them some code he copied off the internet and asking her to 'improve' on it. ( passing it off as his own code ). And the communication from the other side was pretty inconsistent too.. mathematicians not understanding programmers, programmers not understanding mathematics. Results are as you'd expect. And this one doesn't even involve funding. Many other horror stories are there, such ISRO funding some IIT prof for 2 cr. and spending it all on fancy equipment to land a journal paper, while not solving their problem. Bitter lessons learned from such experiences. Nowadays the academics would need to go through a strict vetting process to get any funding, as a result of their overall incompetence and untrustworthiness in contributing to national interests.
Anyway this is all OT. my last post on the topic.
A few of the MNC do have their global research center in india and some of them are doing extremely good work on mathematical software. Maths and IT both comes naturally to us compared to many other countries out there and we do well in an appropriate set up.

The work that progresses are essentially done by a very small team, usually of only 2 SMEs - one from math and one programmer sitting together, both of whom get paid in 8 figures and micro managed by another very good SME as a manager with weekly check on progress. As a rule, none have high number of direct reports at lower level whereas the higher ups directly manage many such small teams. You can understand the cost of such HR structure.

Not every org can manage to pay at that level for such long term goal consistently for decade, that needs the level of access to cheap capital that we as a country do not have.

That's the kind of set up that built the IBM software you mentioned and similar stuff.
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