Kaveri – Air Marshal's Perspective

July 30, 2026

833: THE BATTLE FOR THRUST: INDIA’S QUEST FOR INDIGENOUS JET ENGINES

Article published in the Aug 26 edition of the “Life Of Soldier” Magazine.

The commercial discussions between GE Aerospace and India for the F414 have hit a serious roadblock. The per-unit cost has reportedly nearly tripled, from an initial estimate of approximately ₹70-80 crore to well over ₹200 crore. Moreover, the critical technologies, including the Full Authority Digital Engine Control system, are reported to remain under GE’s control. The Tejas Mk-2, the AMCA, and the Twin Engine Deck-Based Fighter have all been built around the F414’s specific dimensions, meaning any switch now entails a structural redesign, new air-intake engineering, and full recertification that takes years.

Only a small group of countries, including the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom, possesses the technological capability to independently design and manufacture advanced military and civilian aircraft engines. Despite decades of effort, India remains dependent on foreign suppliers for fighter aircraft engines. This dependence represents perhaps the single most important technological vulnerability in India’s aerospace ecosystem. The Kaveri programme, which was meant to resolve the problem, did not do so. Understanding why it did not and what it would genuinely take to do so is the most important defence-industrial question India currently faces.

Engine Development Challenges. Aero engines are among the most sophisticated engineering systems ever developed. Modern jet engines operate under extreme temperatures and pressures while delivering high efficiency, reliability, and performance. Developing a high-performance military turbofan is arguably the most complex engineering challenge in modern industry. It requires the precise synchronisation of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, advanced metallurgy, and digital controls. The engine must operate reliably under extreme conditions, with turbine entry temperatures that frequently exceed the melting points of its components. The four technologies that need to be focused on are: –

- Advanced Hot-Section Metallurgy to manufacture single-crystal turbine blades.

- Thermal Barrier Coatings (TBC) to prevent advanced alloys from failing at temperatures exceeding 1,500°C.

- Aerothermal Design and Core Codes to design codes to predict airflow, flame stability, and thermal stress accurately, enabling independent modifications and derivative engine designs.

- Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) to manage everything from fuel metering to variable stator vanes in real-time.

Kaveri Experience

The Gas Turbine Research Establishment in Bengaluru began developing the Kaveri engine in the mid-1980s. The mandate was to develop an indigenous turbofan capable of producing around 80 kilonewtons of thrust with afterburner. The original completion target was 1996, which was later extended to 2009. The engine did not achieve the required thrust-to-weight ratio. Development challenges included compressor efficiency, turbine blade durability, excessive engine weight, and inadequate afterburner performance. The programme reached a development plateau with a thrust level of approximately 73 kilonewtons. It was formally decoupled from the Tejas programme in 2008. The GE F404 was adopted as the primary powerplant.

But the Kaveri program was not a total waste. It produced important assets, including indigenous FADEC work, certified materials, accumulated engine test hours, and experience in integration and high-altitude testing. It created India’s first indigenous knowledge base in turbine engine design. It established testing facilities, trained engineers, developed computational design capability, and exposed India’s scientific community to the realities of high-performance propulsion engineering. Recent progress includes continued development of Kaveri derivatives for unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) such as the Ghatak.

Effect of Technology Denial. Western nations imposed severe restrictions on sensitive technology transfer after India’s nuclear tests. These adversely affected India’s engine development challenges. India’s nuclear tests in 1998, in particular, triggered a period of comprehensive sanctions that froze several cooperative technology relationships at a particularly sensitive moment in the Kaveri programme’s development. Later, India was admitted to the Missile Technology Control Regime in 2016 and the Wassenaar Arrangement in the same year, and to the Australia Group and the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver arrangement in earlier periods. These admissions improved India’s position as a purchaser of controlled technology. They did not automatically transfer the knowledge embedded in the manufacturing processes. This reflects a broader reality: countries rarely transfer technologies that determine long-term military competitiveness.

Global Approach

Nations capable of manufacturing aircraft engines show that successful aero-engine ecosystems rely on long-term national commitment. The US combined wartime demand, government-funded research, a competitive industry, and strong collaborations among government, academia, industry, and military to build a competitive engine sector. France also followed a state-led approach. It regarded engine development as a strategic sovereign task and ensured programme continuity and the preservation of knowledge. The UK focused on excellence in materials science and turbine engineering. The government, on the other hand, helped to prevent setbacks such as Rolls-Royce’s near-collapse. Russia gave priority to self-reliance. It incurred high costs to maintain specialised design bureaus and industrial infrastructure. It took China 40 years to progress from the WS-10 to the WS-15 engines. China’s perseverance highlights the importance of continued investment, iterative learning, and constant policy support. Analysis of these approaches reveals four universal lessons: –

- National self-sufficiency in propulsion is vital for national security.
- Institutional continuity & state support are essential to preserve knowledge and retain institutional expertise.
- Strategic Patience and project funding are required to achieve sovereignty despite slow initial results.
- Synergistic ecosystems demand long-term partnerships among government, academia, R&D establishments, and private manufacturers.

Renewed Indian Effort: National Aero Engine Mission

Forty-four years after the Gas Turbine Research Establishment first began serious work on what became the Kaveri engine, India has launched something with a different institutional character. The National Aero Engine Mission was formalised in February 2026. NAEM is not another laboratory programme with an open-ended timeline. It is an organisational structure designed to coordinate amongst the agencies involved in aircraft engine development and manufacture. The ₹61,000-crore initiative aims to achieve self-reliance (Aatmanirbharta) in the design, development, and manufacturing of high-thrust fighter jet engines. Driven by the Gas Turbine Research Establishment, the mission aims to break decades of import dependence by 2035.

Task. The task of NAEM is cut out. Develop a defined product with a hard operational deadline, not a research thrust target, or a demonstrator. An engine with a specified performance envelope, a specified platform application, and a date by which it must be ready for flight testing, with the aircraft programme formally committed to using it. The Tejas Mk-2 and the AMCA are the obvious candidates. The AMCA, in particular, intended to be India’s first fifth-generation fighter, will require an engine in the 110-kilonewton class. If that engine is not developed indigenously, India will be forced to import the powerplant for its most strategically sensitive aircraft programme, thereby recreating exactly the dependency the AMCA is meant to resolve.

Aims and Objectives of the National Aero Engine Mission. The central aim of the mission is to establish India as an independent aero engine development nation. Key objectives include: –

- Development of High-Thrust Engines. Co-develop a 120 kN-class engine (scalable to 130–140 kN) primarily for the AMCA Mk2 and future platforms. This engine would enable supercruise, stealth capabilities, high manoeuvrability, and an enhanced payload.

- Indigenous Manufacturing Ecosystem. Establish domestic capabilities for design, testing, certification, and large-scale production.

- Testing Infrastructure. The mission would effectuate the timely establishment of the National Aero Engine Test Complex (NAETC) to provide comprehensive ground and high-altitude testing.

- Human Resources and Skills. Create thousands of specialised jobs in aerospace engineering, materials science, and advanced manufacturing. It will foster a robust talent pipeline through collaborations with academic institutions.

- Dual-Use Technologies. Advances in high-temperature composites, coatings, and alloys will benefit civil aviation, power generation, and space sectors. India’s booming civil aviation market stands to gain significantly.

Success Imperatives.

Private sector participation with real accountability is essential to aerospace manufacturing. The Defence Research and Development Organisation’s laboratory structure has proven ill-suited to the iterative, commercially pressured development process required for engine production. A future engine program should integrate advanced manufacturing companies, startups, and research universities. What is needed is a structure in which one or more private sector aerospace companies, properly capitalised and with access to GTRE’s existing knowledge base, take on programme risk alongside the government. This is not a privatisation argument. It is an argument about what kinds of institutional incentives actually produce functional hardware.

A materials and manufacturing foundation is the need of the hour. The turbine blade problem cannot be solved by importing blades and assembling engines around them. India needs domestic capability in single-crystal casting, thermal barrier coatings, and the high-temperature alloy supply chain. Several Indian private-sector metallurgical companies have demonstrated capabilities in these areas.

Technology induction is required to speed up the development process. Structured access to technology through existing partnerships seems to be the only way out. Licence production is not the answer; knowledge of manufacturing methods needs to be shared. Companies such as Rolls-Royce, GE Aviation, Safran, and Pratt & Whitney have their own commercial and contractual reasons for not sharing the deepest layers of their process knowledge. The negotiation of that distinction matters enormously and should be a specific, explicitly stated objective of the technology transfer agreement rather than an outcome hoped for as a byproduct. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be cheap.

Concluding Thoughts

India’s aerospace ambitions cannot be fulfilled without mastering aero engine technology. An aero engine takes between fifteen and twenty-five years to move from concept to operational maturity, even under favourable conditions, and considerably longer under unfavourable ones. However, the engine problem is not unsolvable. It is genuinely hard, takes a long time, and requires sustained institutional commitment. France, Britain, the United States and Russia have solved it. China is in the process of solving it.

The success of the National Aero Engine Mission is a non-negotiable national priority. It needs to become India’s next successful strategic technology initiative through dedication, perseverance and institutional support. The Mission will not be judged by its initial test results or its early industry partnerships. It will be judged, a decade or more from now, by whether an Indian fighter is flying on an engine fully owned by India.

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Information and data included in the blog are for educational & non-commercial purposes only and have been carefully adapted, excerpted, or edited from reliable and accurate sources. All copyrighted material belongs to the respective owners and is provided only for wider dissemination.

References: –

India Today. “India-US GE F414 AMCA fighter jet engine deal in limbo amid nearly 300 per cent increase in cost”. (24 Jun 2026). https://www.indiatoday.in/

New Indian Express. “AMCA engine deal hits roadblock over GE’s threefold price demand”. (24 Jun 2026). https://www.newindianexpress.com/

Times of India. “You have 5-7 years to develop 6th gen aero engines: Rajnath’s challenge for DRDO scientists”. (17 Feb 26). https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Defence Research and Development Organisation. (n.d.). “Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE)”. Ministry of Defence, Government of India. https://www.drdo.gov.in/labs-establishment/gtre

Ministry of Defence. “Tie-up processes under the National Aero Engine Mission launched”. Press Information Bureau. (2026, February 16). https://pib.gov.in/

Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory. Reports on single-crystal turbine blade technology and near-isothermal forging. DRDO Publications.(2021–2026).

Rao, R. S. Why are engines the bottleneck in fighter jet manufacturing in India? Eurasia Review. (2026). https://www.eurasiareview.com/

Gunston, B. “The development of jet and turbine aero engines” (4th ed.). Haynes Publishing.(2006).

Mattingly, J. D. (2006). “Elements of propulsion: Gas turbines and rockets” (2nd ed.). American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. https://doi.org/10.2514/4.861768

Sarkar, S. (Ed.). “India’s defence industry: Challenges and opportunities”. Routledge. (2020).

June 26, 2026

823: Wings of Dominance: The Future of Air Warfare

Q1. What is the new balance of air power in the world today? Are fighter jets still the focus of warfare, or are drones beginning to take their place?

Fighter jets remain the backbone of air power, and that is not about to change. What has changed fundamentally is the ecosystem around them. A modern fighter operates in a networked environment comprising long-range strike weapons, unmanned systems, loitering munitions, airborne tankers, and space-based ISR.

Drones are taking over the missions that are too risky, too repetitive, or too economically unjustifiable to warrant a manned sortie. They are not replacing the manned aircraft.

The prevailing trend favours a combination of manned and unmanned systems. Manned aircraft are focusing on contested, high-end missions that require judgment, adaptability, and versatile payloads. Concurrently, unmanned systems are being employed in persistent, attritable, and mass-effect roles.

The adaptation to this hybrid model is no longer merely a tactical requirement; it has become a strategic necessity.

Q2. Russia’s Su-57 and the US F-35 embody different philosophies — one emphasises air combat, the other network-centric warfare. Whose future will it be?

The Su-57 seems to reflect the traditional Russian emphasis on kinematic performance and super-manoeuvrability.

The F-35 is claimed to be built around sensor fusion and battlespace awareness. It is advertised as capable of detecting, classifying, and engaging the threat at beyond-visual-range distances through a data architecture spanning an entire networked force.

Future aerial combat is progressing towards a network-centric model. Contemporary air engagements are increasingly determined by the priority of achieving information and decision dominance, rather than by performance alone.

Compressing the sensor-to-shooter timeline is now as critical as speed or manoeuvrability. This is fundamentally a problem of decision architecture, not merely of technology.

The sixth-generation programmes are pushing emerging platforms toward multi-domain integration. Fusion of air, space, cyber, and electronic warfare into a single operational architecture will make the network-centric model more definitive.

Q3. China already has the J-20. Has India delayed the AMCA too long, or is it still possible to turn the situation around?

It is a fact that India’s timeline has slipped. The J-20 has been operational for nearly a decade. China is already iterating toward a sixth-generation capability, as evidenced by the prototypes that emerged publicly in late 2024.

AMCA is still working through prototype development. The gap is significant and widening. Reversal of the trend is a realistic necessity.

India can recover lost ground in fighter development if the programme is properly resourced, executed and politically backed.

A significant structural shift is also underway with the Ministry of Defence opening AMCA prototype development to private consortia rather than relying exclusively on the public-sector model.

The window to close the capability gap exists. It will not remain open indefinitely, and the margin for complacency on programme management is close to zero.

Q4. In the wars to come, will Artificial Intelligence and Loyal Wingman drones be more important than pilots?

The pilot does not become less important. His job changes, and in some respects becomes more demanding, not less.

Manned-unmanned combat air teams would have one crewed aircraft effectively commanding a tactical formation of attritable unmanned assets, absorbing risk that would otherwise fall on the manned platform, carrying missiles, jammers, decoys, or forward reconnaissance payloads.

What AI is changing is the speed and volume of decision-making below the human threshold.

AI-enabled satellites and sensors, capable of detecting, classifying, and cueing targets, can push that picture directly to the shooter over tactical data links, rather than routing it back through a ground station first. That is what compressing the sensor-to-shooter timeline. However, human intervention cannot be removed from the kill chain.

As of now, the human crew retains authority over decisions that carry lethal and political consequences, while AI absorbs the burden of processing, prioritising, and routing information faster than any human can.

So, AI and unmanned teaming will unquestionably become more important than they are today. But the human crew would remain relevant and in control.

The pilot of 2040 will be managing a far more complex battle picture, commanding a digital wolfpack rather than flying a single aircraft.

Q5. If India has the opportunity to purchase the F-35 or the Su-57, should we go ahead and purchase them, or stick to developing our own aircraft?

These are not competing choices, and treating them as such leads to a false dilemma.

The IAF’s squadron strength shortfall is real, immediate, and strategically significant. The Rafale has helped close that numerical gap, but has not closed it.

Further, there is a case for qualitative enhancement by the induction of fifth-generation aircraft.

The F-35 carries substantial geopolitical weight, end-use restrictions, and software dependency. Cost, delivery timelines, extended supply chains, Transfer of technology and trust deficit are other factors to be taken into account.

Russia has been a trusted partner, willing to share its technology to a certain extent and accepting Make in India. The Su-57 also raises several concerns besides the factors listed above. India had earlier walked out of the co-development program mainly due to concerns related to cost and technology sharing.

Neither platform offers a clean, dependency-free solution. The importance of self-reliance in defence production is a common lesson emerging from recent wars. The Indigenous program (AMCA) is some time away and urgently needs a technology infusion.

The logical answer is to plug the gap pragmatically by expanding the Rafale order and carefully reassessing the induction of fifth-generation aircraft, while protecting AMCA’s funding and schedule as a non-negotiable national priority.

The near-term interim acquisition and the long-term indigenous programme must be advanced concurrently. The contract should be negotiated in a manner that boosts the indigenous programme rather than undermining it.

Q6. Is engine technology still India’s biggest weakness today?

The answer is YES. The Tejas Mark 1A flies on the American GE F404. AMCA’s initial squadrons will likely depend on an imported engine in the ninety-kilonewton class. The latest news is that negotiations for the GE 414 engine for AMCA have hit rough weather due to a 300 per cent cost increase.

India still does not have a proven indigenous engine anywhere near the ninety to one hundred ten kilonewton range required for a credible fifth or sixth-generation fighter. The Kaveri programme, running since the mid-1980s, is the most visible illustration of how difficult this problem is. High-performance turbofan technology demands a combination of high-temperature metallurgy, single-crystal turbine blade manufacturing, precision tolerances, and decades of iterative test data that very few nations have accumulated.

Urgent need of the hour is a deal that includes a degree of co-production and technology transfer for engine manufacturing in India. Co-production extends the supply chain into India, but it does not give India the ability to independently design, test, and certify a clean-sheet high-thrust engine. Engine independence remains the single weakest link in the self-reliance story.

Q7. Will the export of fighter jets become an increasingly important geopolitical tool?

Fighter exports are already an important geopolitical tool, and their leverage is intensifying rather than diminishing.

Fighter exports create decades of dependency for the buyer. The seller retains influence over the buyer’s operational readiness (by supplying spares, software updates, weapons integration, training pipelines, and maintenance protocols). This dependency lasts for the life of the platform (often 30 to 40 years after the sale).

India’s own indigenous push is a deliberate effort to reduce exposure to precisely this kind of dependency. India’s active promotion of the Tejas and its indigenous missile systems in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and the Gulf reflects a clear understanding that defence exports are as much an instrument of foreign policy as of industrial economics. Future fighter sales will be negotiated as much on reliability of supply and strategic alignment as on cost or raw capability.

Q8. What are India’s greatest achievements and biggest challenges in defence self-reliance?

Tejas moving from a deeply troubled programme to a credible inducted fighter is, to a certain extent, an achievement. The development of indigenous rotary-wing platforms (Dhruv, Rudra, the Light Combat Helicopter Prachand) demonstrates that the industrial capacity extends beyond fast jets. The Astra beyond-visual-range missile and the continued maturation of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile represent genuine capability in the weapons domain. The missile and space programs are doing comparatively well.

Perhaps most significantly, India’s defence production turnover has grown substantially over the past decade. The country has moved from being almost exclusively an arms importer to a growing exporter, which is a structural shift that would have seemed improbable fifteen years ago.

The challenges are equally tangible. Squadron strength remains well below the sanctioned forty-two. Force multipliers, tankers, airborne early warning and control platforms are inadequate in numbers for a force that needs to project across two frontiers simultaneously. Engine technology remains unresolved.

The achievements prove India can build technically demanding systems. What remains unproven is whether it can build them at the pace and scale that the threat environment now demands.

Q9. How will the Indian Air Force look in 2040, compared to today?

By 2040, assuming the squadron strength target is met or even meaningfully mitigated, the IAF should be a genuinely different force, operating on a different conceptual basis.

AMCA should be in serial production, forming the high-end backbone alongside an upgraded Rafale fleet and a substantially modernised Su-30MKI. The Tejas Mark 2 and the twin-engine deck-based fighter should round out the order of battle, bringing the indigenous content of the combat fleet to a level inconceivable at the beginning of this decade.

Loyal Wingman and unmanned systems would be standard formation elements rather than experimental adjuncts.

AI-assisted Space-based ISR would be integrated into the network.

The UCAV and other Unmanned platforms will significantly enhance airpower capabilities.

If the present trajectory and pace are sustained, by 2040 the IAF should be more networked, more integrated with the space and cyber domains, and far less dependent on foreign supply chains than anything currently in service.

Q10. If you had to identify one defining trend in air warfare over the next twenty years, what would it be?

The shift from platform-centric to weapon-centric airpower operating in a networked environment. The idea that the decisive factor in air combat is increasingly not which aircraft you fly, but how fast you can sense, decide, and act across a distributed force. Ada result:

The sensor-to-shooter timeline will get shortened further.

Space-based satellites with onboard AI capable of detecting, classifying, and cueing the targets will push that picture directly to the shooter.

Manned and unmanned systems will operate as a single collaborative entity rather than parallel fleets.

Mastery of the electromagnetic spectrum, with digital and cognitive dimensions layered on top, would become essential.

Stealth, hypersonics, manoeuvrability, drone swarms, and directed energy technologies/capabilities would follow this shift.

The air forces that adapt to it early will hold the operational advantage in 2040 and beyond. The ones that keep procuring better individual platforms while neglecting the architecture around them (i.e. modern equipment running on an outdated decision framework) will find themselves technologically current but operationally lagging.