Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter bd popeye
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Largest opportunity currently is Korea, with the Boramae program in full swing (120x2 by 2032, +Indonesia and maybe Poland).
India is more towards 2030s, Tejas mk.2 and TEDBF will take years to fly and enter production.
I'm referring to Tejas MK1A, currently in production, not Tejas MK2, TEDBF, or AMCA. HAL is enhancing capacity to deliver 32 Tejas MK1A annually. Hence, the news of capping GE F404 engine production to 20 per year for India is deemed unacceptable.
mk.1A is F404, not F414.
They're related, but those are two different engines.
For F404 there are F/A-50(maybe F-50 soon), T-7, and Hurjet - they won't go down anytime soon either.
They are preparing a surge in production for the T-7A, probably that they slowed process to have a better production volume.
Lethe
Captain
This is very silly. Production and delivery schedule of F404-IN20 is set according to contracts negotiated between GoI and General Electric. If India now needs more than 20 F404 engines per year then it can negotiate and pay for them. But in any case there is no evidence that more engines or faster delivery is required. Even if the production rate of airframes eventually exceeds the production and delivery rate for engines, it is entirely plausible that excess deliveries in prior years may have accumulated a stockpile that would be adequate to service the remaining production run. Or matters may be entirely different, one simply cannot know without access to far more details than are publicly available.
TL;DR: It's not clear that there is actually an issue here, and if there is then it almost certainly owes far more to GoI than to GE.
Relatedly, alternative applications for ongoing F404 production are unlikely to be a factor, as India is acquiring a variant specifically customized to its requirements (i.e. more thrust). Per GE the F404-IN20 than the standard F404-102/103/402 variants so there are real material differences between them. It is likely that those low-volume customizations are the limiting factor on how rapidly the production rate can be scaled up and how much it will cost to do so. And it certainly wasn't GE who insisted on a custom variant...
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I came across information stating that 75 engines have been delivered so far, but the total order is for 180 Tejas MK1A. Additionally, there are naval prototypes to be built. If the IAF decides on follow-on orders or if there are export orders, timely delivery could face challenges.
Lucky for them there will be no export orders. Much better options everywhere with mature systems .
Given that it will most likely have HAL's touch of death being involved in here should it go through, I would definitely be avoiding Boeing aircrafts from then on no matter the discount on the airlines
