SOURCE: IDRW NEWS NETWORK
After India and United States suspended an ambitious plan to collaborate on jet engine technology under the much-touted Defence Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI) in 2019 after the US was unwilling to transfer the high technology that was much needed for the engine program to take off.
A reliable source to idrw.org who wants to be anonymous said that talks with French Safran have progressed considerably for American General Electric to make a late entry and it is still not clear what new they are willing to offer when they have refused to transfer core technology after years of negotiation due to control export regime restrictions of the then government.
General Electric unlike Safran was also not ready to incorporate Indian technology in the new proposed engine and was ready to offer only a local license manufacturing contract similar to the AL-31F deal that India has with Russia where the entire supply chain from spares and components could remain with General electric with no scope of India carrying out any improvements or upgrades without taking GE being part of the program.
idrw.org has been informed that the new proposed engine with Safran will not be based on the Snecma M88-3 engine but will share some technology initially but later variants will have much more improved components. the new engine will be smaller than the F414 engine dimensions and will be designed with such dimensions that the existing fleet (Tejas Mk2) can be re-engined without the need for any modification to the airframe or engine bay requiring any redesign.
General Electric already has bagged orders for 99 F404-GE-IN20 engines for 83 Tejas Mk1A fleet and 99 F414-INS6 (98 kN) engines for the Tejas Mk2 fleet which forced General Electric to agree to start local MRO services for these engines in India soon but the lack of commitment to let India manufacture some of the spares for this engines in the past has not left good impressions that it will be able to meet its obligations in development of the new engine.
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