AERO INDIA LIVE! India Considers New Partnership Options For Kaveri Engine
AIN NEWS LIVE FROM AEROINDIA » 2013 by NEELAM MATHEWS February 4, 2013, 2:42 PM India’s Defense Research Development Organization ( DRDO ) has confirmed that it has abandoned plans to jointly develop and produce the Kaveri military aircraft engine solely with France’s Snecma. The change in plan has come after India ordered 99 of General Electric’s F-414 engines—in preference to the Eurojet 2000 engine—for its indigenous Light Combat Aircraft Mark II program, for which the Kaveri is supposed to be an alternative powerplant. “We still need an overseas partner, but it will not be Snecma on a single-vendor basis,” CP Ramnarayanan, director of the DRDO ’s Gas Turbine Research Establishment ( GTRE ) recently told Indian reporters. “We will select our partner through competitive bidding.” A DRDO official told AIN on condition of anonymity that if the Kaveri partnership is reten...