The Government of India (GoI) has informed the Parliament about the future development of indigenous engines for powering aircraft such as Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas variants and Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) in association with an International Engine House.
- Currently, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas is integrated with an imported engine.
- Cause for Integrating with Imported Engine: The LCA Tejas, Flight Operational Clearance (FOC) configuration requires higher thrust than the intended engine requirement. Thus the present architecture of the Kaveri engine cannot be integrated with LCA Tejas.
- The LCA FOC variant and the Mk1A are powered by the GE(General Electric)-F404 engines while the LCA-Mk2 and AMCA in future will initially be powered by more powerful GE-F414 engines.
About Kaveri Project:
i.The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had sanctioned the indigenous Kaveri engine project in 1989 it is now in the trial stage.
ii.Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) is entrusted with the design and development of Kaveri Engine which is a low bypass twin-spool turbofan engine of 80 kN ( kilonewton) thrust class.
iii.The project includes the development of nine full prototype engines and four core engines with an expenditure of Rs 2035.56 crore. The engine has conducted a total of 3217 hours of engine testing and also completed altitude tests and Flying Test Bed (FTB) trials.
Light Utility Helicopters:
i.In November 2021, the defence ministry approved the procurement of 12 LUH from the HAL for around Rs 1,500 crore.
ii.Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) will manufacture 4 Limited Series Production (LSP) of the indigenous Light Utility Helicopters (LUH) by 2022-23 and 8 LSP LUHs by 2023-24.
iii.The numbers would be split equally between the Indian Army and Air Force. The LSP would be followed by the manufacture of Series Production helicopters by HAL.
iv.The LUH along with the K2-229T LUH from Russia is meant to replace the ageing helicopters such as, Cheetah and Chetak which are currently in service.
Recent Related News:
Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar inducted the first 3 of 16 Indigenous Advanced Light Helicopters (ALHs) MK III into Indian Coast Guard (ICG) to assist in coastal surveillance, rescue operations, and further enhance coastal security.
About Ministry of Defence:
Union Minister – Raj Nath Singh (Constituency – Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)
Minister of State – Ajay Bhatt (Constituency – Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar, Uttarakhand)
