Two-Decade LCA Engine Effort Stalls

India's 20-year, nearly $500 million effort to develop a homegrown engine for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) has come to a standstill with the Air Force rejection of a co-development offer from France's Snecma. An Indian Air Force official said the service now will have to search for an off-the-shelf engine overseas to power the aircraft. India's Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) was developing the Kaveri engine to power the LCA. Trying to integrate nearly 16,000 parts and subsystems became too complicated and in 2005, the Kaveri engine caught fire when it was first tested on board a Tupolev-16 aircraft in Russia. GTRE began looking for co-development partners, and after an international tender was released in 2007, NPO Saturn of Russia and Snecma of France were invited to participate but only Snecma of France was short-listed. GTRE has developed nine prototypes of the Kaveri, but the engine was found to be heavier than the required 8.5 tons and provided less thrust than needed to power the LCA, according to a GTRE scientist. The first lot of 40 LCAs being introduced, beginning in 2010, will be powered by the GE 404 engine, but the next batch of aircraft will include several features added by the Air Force that increase the weight of the aircraft by 2 tons. The GE 404 will not be powerful enough to fly the heavier plane, the Air Force official said. New LCAs with bigger engines will be inducted at a later stage. The EJ 200 engine of Eurojet Turbo of Germany and higher thrust GE 414 engine are the two main contenders. Both Eurojet Turbo and General Electric have given demonstrations of their engines.

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