Its Time to Bury Kaveri engine Project and restart Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) director C.P. Ramanarayanan speaking to ” The Week, ” Magazine said how Kaveri engine project was just few years from succeeding and if provided MiG-29 or an SU-30MKI aircraft they could have demonstrated capability of the engines and India could have joined Exclusive club of Countries who can develop Supersonic Aero engines for Fighter aircrafts . Keeping aside Emotional appeal for more funds and few more years, GTRE still not has provided any information if engine send to Gromov Flight Research Institute in Moscow for testing on modified Ilyushin-76 aircraft testbed aircraft has achieved all the design parameters and achieved success in all testing phases which were planned . Project already has consumed 2,105 crores, even if GTRE is given extra funds, Kaveri will be more of Technology demonstrator since it failed to achieve its maximum thrust required to power LCA Tejas , nor has GTRE promised any refinement or potential engine growth assessments for current Kaveri engine to meet further requirements of Tejas MK-2 or AMCA. also, GTRE also has failed to reduce engine weight which is still on higher than the design specifications. Before engine even enters production it will require hundreds of hours of flight testing deputing one aircraft will not be of any help in fast tracking the program since it will require hundreds of hours of flight time which can drag on for few more years without even achieving any military objectives . It is also unlikely IAF will risk giving an aircraft from its current fleet to GTRE for such experiments where possible loss of aircraft is on a higher side. There is no point in testing an engine on the aircraft which has failed to meet basic design parameters like thrust or weight specification just to complete its R&D. Instead of letting lessons learned so far on Aero Engine development go down the drain, Government should allow multiple Defense Public sector units to come together under one roof to develop new engines for MK-2 or AMCA. GTRE can rope in HAL who has experience in manufacturing AL-31 FP for the Su 30MKI and the RD-33 MK for the Mig-29K and reputed companies like Rolls-Royce or Honeywell can also be used for consultant roles to keep track of development . Learning from failures of Kaveri engine project government should not only provide extra funds and but also provide development of Infrastructure so that engine can be tested in India , Government should provide Testbeds aircrafts not from IAF inventory but their own World has enough older aircrafts which can be used for testing of new engines . GOI should also ensure that it installs mechanism in place to check progress of the project and not let it go Kaveri way.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 12:51:43 +0000
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