SOURCE: RAUNAK KUNDE / NEWS BEAT / IDRW.ORG
After getting backing from the former Chairman of HAL, now Air Chief Marshal (Retd) Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria in a recent media interaction said that India should pursue the development of a more advanced variant of the Kaveri engine even though AMCA will be getting a new 110kN class of engine that will be co-developed with a foreign OEM.
idrw.org was the first to report a few months back that former heads of Defence PSUs and eminent scientists and engineers are backing the development of a 90kN class of engine that will be further developed based on the existing Dry Kaveri engine Core that is under development for the Country’s UCAV program.
The present Dry Kaveri engine can generate 46kN of Thrust with an after-burner section it will be able to generate around 73.6kN Class of thrust which is not good enough to be used on a fighter jet of LCA-Tejas Class but is good enough for UCAV or Loyal Wingman Programs.
The proposed modified Dry Kaveri engine if it can generate 57kN of Thrust, then with an afterburner section will be able to generate around 90.6kN of thrust which will be good enough for LCA-Tejas Mk1 Class fighter jets that are powered by an F404-IN20 engine that is presently generating 84 kN class of thrust.
GTRE claims that the Dry Kaveri engine is now much more stable engine after it was able to fix a lot of inherit core issues over the last few years and the engine after clearance from French Safran which carried out an Audit of the engine is now ready for High altitude trials. GTRE has plans to start limited series production for further trials so that it can later be fitted into an early prototype of LCA-Tejas to be used as a Flying Testbed for UCAV and Loyal Wingman program.
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