Our Bureau
New Delhi
India’s Ministry of Defence seems to be taking significant steps in order to strengthen India’s already capable military prowess. The recent reports that have come out report that the Defence Ministry has proposed that they develop the next generation of the fighter jets engines in collaboration with France.
This proposal from the Indian defence ministry is to aim and strive towards self-reliance in the future. This will help the country in designing and manufacturing these technologies in India as a part of their Make in India initiative. The proposal of this collaboration with France is actually very advantageous to the country and should be looked as a big step by the government if taken.
Currently in India’s fleet all the fighter aircrafts run on the engines developed outside India. The procurement and maintenance of foreign originated engines skyrocketed the cost of these fighter aircrafts. As per the projections, the country might be requiring more than 250 next generation engines in the next 10 years to reach their targets.
As per the reports, the Ministry of Defence recommended this tie-up with France to the central government after extensive consultations. The consultants also included key inputs by stakeholders and assessments by a technical committee of all aspects of fighter jet engine productions. The project is heavily backed by the Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh who is keen to establish a domestic manufacturing system of these fighter aircrafts.
The project is going to roughly cost around ₹61,000 crore and will look forward to jointly create a 120kn fighter jet engine for future platforms which will include the advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA). For this project the ministry took proposals from both Safran of France and Rolls Royce of the United Kingdom, which they assessed closely with heavy focus on technical specifications and financial implications.
