SpArK
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American heart for Tejas
25 OCTOBER, 2010, 10:23 AM
BY: Pratik Sawerdekar For Security October issue
Defense community in India was once again taken by surprise when an almost certain contract of 99 engines for the countrys most ambitious military project went not to the Europeans but the Americans. Many believed that Eurojets EJ-2000 was certain to win given the fact that it had IAFs support and was expected to be the lowest bidder. But it was the Americans who prevailed just by luck. Now LCA-Tejas Mk-2 will be powered by General Electrics GE-414 engine also used by F/A-18 Super Hornet and SAAB JAS-39 Gripen.
Eurojet as a matter of fact is believed to be the lowest bidder but it submitted its revalued figures just a day before the deadline hence the committee evaluating the offers didnt had enough time to go through the revalued offer and hence the earlier submitted bid was taken into consideration which was higher than that of American firms bid. Now since both the engines meet all the requirements the committee declared the GE-414 as the winner as it was the lowest bidder. Many people were disappointed by the news and declared that India succumbed to US pressure.
We may not know the entire truth but the chances of the above story being true and US pressure being false is very likely. GE Aviation is a financially much stronger company than Eurojet and it is a subsidiary of General Electric which is a multi-hundred billion dollars company. Also the GE-414 program has backing of American Govt. thus lot of financial support too. The GE-414 engine has also paid its R&D cost as around 1000 of these engines are already built and scores more are on order thanks to US Navys massive orders of Hornet fighters.
not only means that GE-Aviation is in a better position to provide the engine at lower cost but also keep the price low after the contract is signed. They for instant are providing tools and equipments to HAL to manufacture these engines for free where as the Eurojet is charging for it. We could have expected cost escalation with Eurojet as it did make mistakes while bidding.
The potential of this deal is huge; it will make the Super Hornet and Gripen cheaper in the MMRCA competition. This means the GE-Avaition not has a contract of 99 engines plus 50 in option but also has chances of winning 126-252 engines with option of 64-128 more. Also every aircraft needs atleast one engine change in its life time hence in longer term GE-Aviation can end up supplying upto 700 engines to India.
Many have raised alarm that India will have to depend upon the Americans even for their own aircraft. This is true, as USA is known for changing its policies and imposing sanctions within a short span of time but Indo-US relation has grown and US sees India as an important ally against China and hence would like to keep the relation warm. Even if we look this in a most
negative sense we can come to a conclusion that it is still the best possible move by India. This is because if in next 3-4 years US imposes sanctions on India, we cannot expect the Europeans to keep supplying the EJ-2000 had they won the contract and support the Tejas program as European Union follows the US decisions blindly and wont supply EJ-2000 either. Thus, sanction threat is not all gone if the Eurojet engine was chosen. Secondly time frame is important, if by the time US imposes sanctions and we have learnt how to build the engines than it wont be a issue as HAL in past has proven that it can maintain American engines without their support and since we have learnt to build the engine on our own we can keep doing it with sanctions denying GE support.
Ultimately India seems to have played its cards right and has given its most ambitious project a final boost. India can now truly focus on getting the Mk-2 variant developed and hope for quick production to replace IAFs obsolete fleet.
.. that everyone is giving us 
