Air Force Tejas Mk1A: News & Discussions: 02 January 2022

[williams]

The real mistake is not funding Kaveri. License production of someone's else engine is not really a game changer.

https://x.com/VinodDX9/status/1937737540254974028 ---> I'll say that we have made a mistake by not having long term plans from the beginning for Tejas in large numbers and subsequently by not having an Indian production line of the F404-GE-IN20.

We lost a decade and it is not going to come back no matter what. Hopefully we are making the amends and moving forward. We need locally produced GEs with its compromises to get the Tejas program going until we gain back engine tech maturity.

[Rakesh]

We lost a decade and it is not going to come back no matter what. Hopefully we are making the amends and moving forward. We need locally produced GEs with its compromises to get the Tejas program going until we gain back engine tech maturity.

We are still stuck on the bandwagon of ToT for engine technology.

No amends are being made to move forward. We will be doing screwdrivergiri on other nations' engines and then shamelessly state that the engine is being built from the raw material stage.

Most current example of engine assembly ---> viewtopic.php?p=2652912#p2652912
P.S. The above link is what HAL refers to as building turbofans from raw material stage

[sanjayc]

The only solution is a "National Aircraft Engine Mission," with GTRE, HAL, ISRO, IITs, IIS and top three or four private players like Bharat Forge, etc. as partners. They will crack the problem in 5 years and get Kaveri up and running

[Cain Marko]

After what happened after Pok 2.0 and the sanctions on LCA, it was bewildering to see ADA choose a GE engine for the bird. Absolutely asinine. Why blame just hal.

[bala]

I believe GTRE should have first worked on a lower rated jet engine and get it working/operational. Then you move onto higher ratings. Getting a working operational engine is the hurdle to circumvent. The BMW jet engine of Germany was a working operational engine which WW-II victors got their hands into. Even though Frank Whittle of Britain dabbled in jet engines (he is credited with Jet engine, even though he did not have a working operational one), the know how from germany is what US/Russia/France used. Theory and practice are far removed, there are practical know how tricks which make the engine tick. India is going through practically climbing the tall mountain in engine tech. Also flat rating is something quite new not attempted by others.

Testing and certification is huge and don't know where things are with Kaveri engine, even though some testing in Gromov has been done. Actual real world testing for ruggedness, fail safe performance, all weather performance and more are needed. GE has a facility in Ohio for environmental (rain, hail ice storm, wind) testing of engines, HAL/GTRE needs one facility like this.

[V_Raman]

In spite of all the history, if they are still going for GE engines - GOI and Forces trust their quality and reliability so much that they are orders of magnitude better than all other military engine they have in the inventory! They want LCAs to be workhorses and not hangar queens. Dont forget that it was Marut with Orpheus engines that won the war for us by being the workhorse - it was due to western engines...

[Prem Kumar]

We need a national mission, like others have pointed above, headed by the PMO itself, for jet engines in particular and powerplants of all sizes/ratings in general. There are enough precedences like National Semiconductor Mission, Supercomputing mission etc

It needs a serious ass-kicker program manager with aggressive interim milestones/deliverables

Bring in a consortium of private players, DRDO labs, IITs, startups etc. Conduct hardware hackathons. Get the youth excited. This is a golden time - manufacturing is becoming "cool" again worldwide and also in India

Liberal funding over a decade but with a DARPA like focus on results. It needs to be our moon-mission

And GTRE cannot be the lead agency in this consortium because they have lost their mojo. Them & HAL are just like driftwood now - going with the flow

Enough people have tagged Modi about this. When he can personally monitor Gati Shakti, Pragati, Jal Jeevan & Vande Bharat programs, there is no reason he cannot monitor something as critical as this. This cannot be left to Rajnath Singh

[Cain Marko]

In spite of all the history, if they are still going for GE engines - GOI and Forces trust their quality and reliability so much that they are orders of magnitude better than all other military engine they have in the inventory! They want LCAs to be workhorses and not hangar queens. Dont forget that it was Marut with Orpheus engines that won the war for us by being the workhorse - it was due to western engines...

It was not an air force decision on the engine and the current (for nigh on 2 decades) workhorse of the fleet is the Su30mki with Russian engines

[Bharadwaj]

https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/up-f ... ryshareurl

. However, in a volte face, HAL in March 2025 decided to put in radar and EW systems from ELTA, the supplier for the first 40 aircraft, for those final 43 aircraft as well.

These are issues that should not be washed in public and settled internally. The radar is certified by CEMILAC for production so HAL should cooperate in integrating it with the scorpius till the indigenous pod is ready.

[pravula]

https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/up-f ... ryshareurl

. However, in a volte face, HAL in March 2025 decided to put in radar and EW systems from ELTA, the supplier for the first 40 aircraft, for those final 43 aircraft as well.

These are issues that should not be washed in public and settled internally. The radar is certified by CEMILAC for production so HAL should cooperate in integrating it with the scorpius till the indigenous pod is ready.

HAL is looking at production optimization. Changing Radar and EW for a tiny order is just stupid.

[Bharadwaj]

Stupid or not the commitment was made at the start of the process. I do understand Hal’s conundrum as a listed company that has to take decisions in national interest and not fully in line with profit making ideas. Let us hope the upcoming 97 has the Uttam and local ew pod combination from bird number one.