It’s official now that the first squadron of the indigenously-developed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas, meant for the IAF will be powered by American-made jet engines. On Wednesday, with none of the usual fanfare that surrounds the announcement of contracts, HAL quietly finalised an order for 24 General Electric F404 jet engines at a cost of just over $100 million (Rs 440 crore).

The engines will power the 20 LCA fighters on order by the IAF, and is scheduled to be inducted for operation by 2011.

The purchase pointedly calls back into question the status of DRDO’s GTX-35VS Kaveri jet engine programme, sanctioned in 1989 at a cost of Rs 383 crore. The project has wound up with a revised deadline of December 2009 and a budget estimate of Rs 2,839 crore. After failing ground and high altitude tests in Russia in 2004 and recently, DRDO has hired the services of a French partner to help it iron out serious technological flaws to operationalise what is still only a heavy and imperfect prototype. When ready, the engine is likely to be an Indo-European joint venture product, and not indigenous as originally planned.

DRDO summarises the Kaveri’s imperfections as pertaining to “aerodynamic, aero-mechanical, combustion and structural integrity.”

What scientists at the Kaveri’s development lab, the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), are perplexed about is DRDO chief M Natarajan’s comment to reporters at the recently concluded Aero India show in Bangalore. He said on February 9 that the LCA programme would continue “Kaveri or no Kaveri”, a comment perceived by his colleagues to be offhand, considering the substantial funds that have already been sunk into the programme.

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