Kaveri Engine Project update

[Raje amar]

LCA and Kaveri developments were the right ways, but the decisions taken in these developments were disastrous and put our industry, just as our airforce years behind other countries. That's what people forget when they see DRDO/ADA celebrating another testflight of another prototype, or the useless testflight of Kaveri in Russia. That means so far we haven't benefitted at all from this, so we have to have the guts to say stop and find other solutions, when these kind of developments are going the wrong ways and don't support them whatsoever.

i totally agree with you regarding the codevelopment.
But what troubled me is the part posted above. By that logic we should have abandoned missile development program long back with the failure of TRISHULE, ALSO. Troubles with Akash long reaction time and also initial failuers of Agin missile. Also ISRO should leave GSLV program.
Some developments take more time, that Dost mean we abandon it.

 

[sancho]

i totally agree with you regarding the codevelopment.
But what troubled me is the part posted above. By that logic we should have abandoned missile development program long back with the failure of TRISHULE, ALSO. Troubles with Akash long reaction time and also initial failuers of Agin missile. Also ISRO should leave GSLV program.
Some developments take more time, that Dost mean we abandon it.

No, because we don't get technical assistance in all fields, especially not in the time we started the missile and space programs. But in the aero or engine field, we have this access and we have to use it, because it's one of the major advantages we have. There are only a few countries in the world that are so lucky to have full access to all kind of weapons no matter if it's US, Brazilian, European, Russian, Ukraine, Israeli, South African, S. Korean or Japanese. Especially our opponents don't have this advantage so we have to play our cards in these fields wisely. However, in the last years we did the opposite, we tried to show everybody that we are as capable and can do it alone, but exactly these developments failed, while those that came out of JV or co-developments are the most successful.
The change of ToT and offset policy of MoD shows, that they have understand it and from Defexpo and all the JV / co-developments between Indian and foreign privat companies we know they have understood it as well. But the problem ist still that many people think, we have to do it alone, mainly because of indigenous pride reasons and that leads us only in disadvantage!

 

[sudhir007]

Outlook bleak for India

India has no fixed plans to fully develop the indigenous Kaveri fighter engine for the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) Tejas aircraft.

“The Defence Research Development Organisation [DRDO] has not fixed any timeframe to fully develop the Kaveri Aero Engine for the [Tejas],” says defence minister AK Antony.

The announcement is the closest New Delhi has come to abandoning the long-delayed engine programme, which has suffered from major performance issues and cost overruns.

Antony noted that the Tejas requires an engine capable of producing 90kN (20,200lb) of thrust, but the “Kaveri does not fully meet this requirement.”

“Therefore, it has been decided to use variants of Kaveri engine to power unmanned air vehicles and also for marine applications,” he says.

He adds, however, that a Kaveri jet engine could be tested aboard a Tejas Mk 1 in another three years. This suggests that major issues still need to be ironed out before the engine is married to a manned fighter.

Antony made the comments in a written reply to a question in parliament.

The Tejas Mk I uses the General Electric F404 power plant, while the planned Tejas Mk II will use the General Electric F414.

In March, Antony told parliament that the Kaveri’s development cost was Rs28.39 billion ($528 million), nearly 10 times greater than the Rs3.83 billion originally allocated.

 

[sudhir007]

 

[sancho]

So an official confirmation that Kaveri K9 did not meet the requirements and that LCA has weight and drag issues. I would so love to ask him why they didn't choose a foreign engine for LCA first and added Kaveri later only. He even said that developing a jet engine is one of the most complex and difficult developments and still they bound it to LCA, which caused the main part of the delays. So Mr Saraswat has DRDO made such a failure in the planing stage?

 

[Boson]

Point to note: Kaveri Engine, which has already been flawlessly tested for 55 hours on IL-76 (as one of it's engines), will in its the current state enable the current LCA to be used for 75% of its flight envelope.

I have never felt Kaveri to be even "remotely" a failure. It's a BIG stepping stone .... to .... for example K-10.

(Just for the sake of comparison, WS-10A only targets a Thrust-to-Weight of 7.8 .... while Kaveri already achieved Thrust-to-Weight of 9. We don't want to pursue K-9+ now, but collaborate for K-10 which would be good enough to cover the full flight envelop of LCA). Knowing chinese, they would be jumping up and down if WS-10A could cover even 60% of J-10's flight envelop compared to the russian AL-31s.

In parallel, I await the "current" Kaveri to be integrated with one the LCA prototypes, which is in progress.

 

[WHITESMOKE]

The worst part is that DRDO is not telling clearly what they are going to do with kaveri. If current design is not good enough, they should tell the people that they are closing this engine prog and will use it for specific purpose while design and study for new engine will start. One one hand they say telling that this engine is not good enough for tejas, while on the other hand no one has any clue what is the future of indian developments for home made engine. Why dont they take kaveri as base and start developing a new engine. As there is no clear target point for kaveri, the team would be clueless.

 

[sancho]

Point to note: Kaveri Engine, which has already been flawlessly tested for 55 hours on IL-76 (as one of it's engines), will in its the current state enable the current LCA to be used for 75% of its flight envelope.

In parallel, I await the "current" Kaveri to be integrated with one the LCA prototypes, which is in progress.

That's the crucial point! IF K9 really would offer enough thrust to be used for such an ammount of the flight envelope, we would have already seen at least LCA prototypes flying with it, or LCA MK1 beeing ordered with K9 instead of GE404 IN20. So it's nothing but a claim of him to make Kaveri look better, after admitting that it didn't met the requirements.

Wrt to Chinese engines, they face similar problems as we does at the engine developments, but they were smart enough to not bound them to their fighter developments and to use available stopgap engines first. That's why JF 17 and J10 are in operational service and successful, while LCA is nothing but a prototype so far!

The worst part is that DRDO is not telling clearly what they are going to do with kaveri. If current design is not good enough, they should tell the people that they are closing this engine prog and will use it for specific purpose while design and study for new engine will start. One one hand they say telling that this engine is not good enough for tejas, while on the other hand no one has any clue what is the future of indian developments for home made engine. Why dont they take kaveri as base and start developing a new engine. As there is no clear target point for kaveri, the team would be clueless.

Actually they already admitted that they can't do it alone anymore and want the co-development to reach the next step, but IAF so far rejected the idea and wanted indigenous developments. The potential use of Kaveri as a base for a UAV or even naval engine development is not a bad idea, but mainly is to distract from the fact that they failed badly!

 

[Black Widow]

So an official confirmation that Kaveri K9 did not meet the requirements and that LCA has weight and drag issues. I would so love to ask him why they didn't choose a foreign engine for LCA first and added Kaveri later only. He even said that developing a jet engine is one of the most complex and difficult developments and still they bound it to LCA, which caused the main part of the delays. So Mr Saraswat has DRDO made such a failure in the planing stage?

What if requirement change in middle of development????

What IAF was looking in 90s (When Kaveri started) . A engine with 50-80 KN thrust with weight 1000-1100 KG. What Kaveri is 1250 KG power plant with 51-81 KN power.
Lets compare it with GE404 Engine , GE 404 IN engine is 1035 KG with 53-85 KN thrust.
So if today GE404 will replaced by Kaveri, it will work almost equal...



What IAF wants today??? Engine with 55-98 (almost 100) KN thrust with 1100 Kg . GE 414 is giving same output.


If IAF bring down LCA weight by 300-400 kg and if GTRE bring down Kaveri weight to 1150 KG, things will work.

 

[Sergi]

What if requirement change in middle of development????

What IAF was looking in 90s (When Kaveri started) . A engine with 50-80 KN thrust with weight 1000-1100 KG. What Kaveri is 1250 KG power plant with 51-81 KN power.
Lets compare it with GE404 Engine , GE 404 IN engine is 1035 KG with 53-85 KN thrust.
So if today GE404 will replaced by Kaveri, it will work almost equal...



What IAF wants today??? Engine with 55-98 (almost 100) KN thrust with 1100 Kg . GE 414 is giving same output.


If IAF bring down LCA weight by 300-400 kg and if GTRE bring down Kaveri weight to 1150 KG, things will work.

And how is IAF going to scale down weight of LCA ??? I don't think it's IAF who increased the weight
GTRE tried everything to reduce weight but they can't so GE comes in play.
Evenif GE404 has nearly same output it is 200kg less

 

[sancho]

What if requirement change in middle of development????

Not in the middle, but because of the issues during the development! LCA got too heavy and draggy, Kaveri got too heavy and too less powerful, both resulted in the need of more thrust to get the same performance that IAF required in the begining. But that's only for MK2, the 40 x MK1s comes with GE 404 engines and if the K9 would be as good as he claimed, we would have integrated the engine into the prototypes and at least in these MK1s. But that is not the case and now the aim is, to replace the GE 404 engines during MLU with Kaveri K10, which makes K9 to a complete failure.

And how is IAF going to scale down weight of LCA ??? I don't think it's IAF who increased the weight
GTRE tried everything to reduce weight but they can't so GE comes in play.
Evenif GE404 has nearly same output it is 200kg less

IAF don't reduce the weight, that's DRDO, ADA and HALs duty and that will be even more difficult with the stretched fuselage, additional fuel tanks and the heavier engine. Lets wait and see, but the problem is that DRDO is already focusing on AMCA instead of insisting on the co-development for an engine for LCA in first place.

 

[Boson]

Kaveri is already flight tested on IL-76 .... which was a wise decision, since IL-76 is a four engine plane.

Nobody tests a new engine on a single engine plane (except, perhaps chinese who tried WS-10A on a single engine J-10 which actually caused one of the four known crashes of J-10).

I think Kaveri is following the right approach .... determine the engine capacities on ground, then on a proven 4 engine aircraft like IL-76 .... and then fit it to LCA prototype for an envelope for which the engine is proven to be useful.

Integration of Kaveri (K-9) to one of the prototypes is already in progress.

There is no point whining that the glass is half empty ..... rather keep the efforts on the fill up the empty half. And off course, acknowledging that significant strides have been made in turbofan jet engine technology by GTRE.

 

[Sergi]

Integration of Kaveri (K-9) to one of the prototypes is already in progress.

There is no point whining that the glass is half empty ..... rather keep the efforts on the fill up the empty half. And off course, acknowledging that significant strides have been made in turbofan jet engine technology by GTRE.

can you support your claim with any link or it's a internal news ???

 

[Boson]

can you support your claim with any link or it's a internal news ???

Here you go: Economic Times dated 14th May, 2012

Technology demonstration of Kaveri Engine with Light Combat Aircraft in 3 years: A K Antony - Economic Times

Technology demonstration of Kaveri Engine with Light Combat Aircraft in 3 years: A K Antony

NEW DELHI: Premier defence research agency DRDO plans to commence flight trials for technology demonstration of Kaveri Engine with the Light Combat Aircraft in about three years time, government told the Lok Sabha today.

In a written reply to the House, Defence Minister A K Antony said that "DRDO has not fixed any time frame to fully develop the Kaveri Aero Engine for the LCA, Tejas.... It is planned to commence flight trials for technology demonstration of Kaveri Engine with LCA Tejas Mk-I in about three years' time."


He was asked whether DRDO has fixed any timeframe to fully develop the Kaveri aero engine for the LCA.

"LCA Tejas requires 90 kN thrust class engine to meet its operational requirement, whereas Kaveri engine does not fully meet this requirement. It has been decided to use variants of Kaveri Engine to power Unmanned Air Vehicle and also for marine applications," Antony said.

Replying to a question on the monetary allocations made to the DRDO in last three years, the Minister tabled a report of the money provided to it under various heads.

Since 2009-10 till 2011-12, government's budgetary estimate for the DRDO was Rs 28,543.43. The revised estimate for the same period was Rs 28,888.55 crore.

The actual expenditure incurred by the organisation since 2009 till 2011-72 has been Rs 28,485.40 crore.

In reply to a question on delivery of equipment by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Minister of State for Defence M M Pallam Raju said that the "government has taken cognisance of the complaints of IAF regarding delayed delivery of equipment by HAL."

There have been delays in some projects due to rework of the Jigs supplied by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) in respect of Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers (AJT), the Minister said.

"Delays were also noticed in establishing the facilities for complex engine components and radar software in respect of SU-30 MKI aircraft and certification of Shakti engine by the OEM in respect of Advance Light Helicopters (ALH)," Raju said.

Changes in Standard of Preparation (SOP) for the LCA and delay in engine development by the OEM in respect of Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT) also caused further time lags in these projects, he said.

 

[sancho]

Kaveri is already flight tested on IL-76 .... which was a wise decision, since IL-76 is a four engine plane.

But not on LCA, it wasn't even integrated for ground tests and taxi trials so far, which makes the claim that it would offer enough thrust for 75% of the requirement more than unlikely. Testing the engine on other test aircrafts or ground test facilities doesn't matter here, because the engine was not meant to be a tech demonstrator, but to power LCA and it is a failure in this field. DRDO was only able to offer a tech demonstrator so far and hopes to base future engine developments on the limited experience they got now. But as they admited, for any fighter development K9 is not useful and they are not good enough to do it alone, therefor even they want foreign support!
So when you look at it with a more realistic view, the glass is not even half full and there is still much to go to fill it!