And had we accepted the EJ offer what would we have gotten? Why does this false definition of ToT continue to prevail? The Eurojet consortium offered, like another OEM, the "ToT" required to manufacture engines in country and overhaul them given the setting up of adequate facilities (or expansion in the existing Koraput facility). They, and no other OEM, has or EVER will offer the know how and the know why required for developing our own engine, at best they will offer to use the EJ core for any prospective future engine and even when we go about machining the hot section components for the engine (like we do for the Sukhois) the concerned materials and alloys shall be sourced from the consortium itself.
In such circumstances why should we diversify the type (by origin) of engines we are to use and by extension maintain? The Americans shall power the LCA, so it behooves us to look at commonality and the therefore GE's EPE might well be the required solution.
Your assumption that we don't get ToT is based on the past experience with licence productions, fair enough, but what you miss is the difference of what was „allowed“ to us in the past in licence productions and what is on „offer“ to us today!
Back than we hardly had the chance to buy state of the art arms, let alone techs via licence production, which actually only changed with the MKI deal around 2000. Today 1.5 decades later, with our market, the economical and political improvements, things are different and we have much more access to arms and even key techs, as well as development partners. We just have to use that advantage in the best manner! The LCA MK2 engine competition showed this:
Eurojet, on the other hand, has pitched the EJ200 with the very tempting notion of a dedicated EJ200 global production line in India, along with true qualitative technology transfer, that will include single crystal technology to HAL and GTRE.
LIVEFIST: BUZZ: Eurojet Throttles Up For Tejas? [And Therefore, MMRCA?]
Apart from that, they offered the joined design and development of modifications, like a naval version for N-LCA or the 3D TVC option, that they have developed to Tech Demo level so far. Are you really telling me that this was not a huge chance for India to get crucial techs that we lack today? Just compare the current sitation now and what could be the sitation if we played our cards right:
- 99 x GE 414G engines selected for LCA MK2, with basic ToT to assemble the engines in India
- no technical gains for indigenous engine programs
- the 414G doesn't offer enough thrust for AMCA, therefor the AMCA program don't gain from that engine
- GE is no option to help Kaveri and now the indigenous program is cancelled after wasting more than a decade and millions
=> limited ToT, no gain for AMCA, no gain for Kaveri!
Now if we had selected the EJ200:
- 99 x EJ200 engines selected for LCA MK2, with crucial ToT and customisation options, depending on our needs
- high technical gains for indigenous engine programs
- Eurojet could had helped the Kaveri program, via a joint Kaveri / EJ 230 development
- the EJ200 doesn't offer enough thrust for AMCA, but the TVC development would had improved LCAs maneuverability and our capability to develop an own engine with such a feature
=> high ToT, TVC gain for LCA and AMCA, crucial techs and possibly even joint development for Kaveri!
In short, all our indigenous programs could had benefited from that single procurement, if we had combined the licence production order of 99 engines, with the offered joined developments into a joint Kaveri engine development!
Btw, Eurojet was not the only choice to offer us comparable advantages! Snecma offered us a co-development for Kaveri, because they couldn't offer an off the shelf engine for LCA MK2, Klimov offered us the RD 33MK or better an RD93 varient based on the MK for LCA MK2 and a joint Kaveri development as well. And since the MK is already navalised, we could have used the same engines in N-LCA MK2 and Mig 29K in single and twin engine varients, but we have rejected Russian technology right away, only because we thought it's inferior to western techs, ignoring the fact that it's still far better than anything we can develop on our own.
All this shows the difference of ToT and access to techs we have today, compared to the past. Of course, we will have to pay high costs to get them and of course we will have to negotiate hard to get to the crucial techs, but the fact remains "
we can get them today"!
so they have different version of KF........so selection of engine will depends on the type of KF is considered
I guess that was a proposal of the initial concept stage and to cover different thrust classes in their offer, but it's clear how interested GE is in that project.
i think going for eurojet now is waste of time money and resources at this point .......since is EPE is evolution of F404>>F414>>F423(?) we are already familiar with it ..what do you think?
Basically as said in my post to Agent_47 and Dillinger, GE will offer us enough thrust if we pay for it, but the gain for AMCA and for indigenous engine efforts will be limited and I still think we should go for a single engine design.
