I don't really understand what would be the benefit of RD-93 TOT if Pakistan could not absorb it anyways. We have to be honest with ourselves ... Pakistan doesn't really have an indigenous gas turbine industry and is heavily unlikely going to develop gas turbines by itself. Even manufacturing engines with a license would already be extremely difficult given the present gas turbine infrastructure. As India found out the extremely hard way, building gas turbines is not simply throwing money at it.
Bad governance since early 70's is the main cause of this unfortunate situation.
In order to indigenous development of a complicated industry such as aviation gas turbine industry, Pakistan need two major resources. (1) Skilled manpower and (2) Finance
Pakistan do possess talented and skilled manpower in abundance.
However, ensuring availability and optimum utilization of right amount of financial resource at a given time is another issue.
Whenever, you invest in an industry, you always consider, that the final product or service you provide should be consumed locally to attain the break-even. Then you look for foreign consumers.
But investing in an aviation industry is completely a different ball game.
Pakistan is a smaller country in geographical sense compared to Russia, China, USA and even India.
Therefore we do not have large airliners. Hence local consumption of indigenously developed aviation products is limited and cannot meet the break-even as the cost to produce them is too high.
In order to establish aviation industries in Pakistan, it must first seek foreign consumers for products and services.
But to seek foreign consumers you need to attract them.
PAF being major consumer of aviation product is helping Pakistan to develop infrastructure of complicated aviation industries. Establishment of AMF, MRF, Avionics and Radar Rebuild Factories, Engine Overhaul Factories are few steps to achieve this goal. Till recent, these infrastructures were being utilized purely to support military aviation, but now these facilities are opened for civil use such as PIA. Foreign customers such as Boeing have made contracts to manufacture wide body aircraft parts at PAC. Super Mushshak, K-8, and JF-17 are being sold to number of countries.
Step-wise ToT of RD-93 is one of the stages to develop aviation gas turbine industry infrastructure. Following could be some of the important steps of complete ToT.
1.Establishing overhauling facility.
2.Installation of various testing rigs and facilities.
3.Assembling and testing of engines from Knock down kits.
4.State of the art Test Cells
5.Manufacturing various smaller components such as engine harnesses, pipes, bearings etc,
6.Manufacturing of nozzles actuators, engine gearbox, fuel pump, hydro-mechanical furl control, Electronic fuel control and many more.
7.Manufacturing fan, core compressor modules, turbine module, combustion chamber, engine tail pipe etc.
Initially the infrastructure will be RD-93 specific, but this can be upgraded for other engines.
Yes, the cost to establish these facilities is enormous. Pakistan cannot afford it at present financial situation. PAF has to attract foreign and local business partners.
. If you wanted to look at the engine's true quality, you should pay attention to its thrust to weight ratio, T4 temperature, specific fuel consumption, and MTBO/serviceability.
