New Delhi: British aerospace giant Rolls-Royce has submitted what it describes as its final offer to jointly design and manufacture a new 120 kN-plus fighter engine for India’s Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).
This final offer lays out a specific timeline for the new engine by promising an engine core test by 2030, first flight by 2034 and production by 2036 if the contract is signed by end of 2026.Making an aggressive pitch against French rival Safran, the company said it was willing to create a full-spectrum propulsion ecosystem in India—from design and development to manufacturing, maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), and future upgrades.
This, along with 100 percent complete transfer of technology and intellectual property generated under the programme that stays with India.“There are only three genuine aero-engine manufacturers in the world. Two of them are in the US and the third is Rolls-Royce,” the company’s executive vice president (transformation) for India, Sashi Mukundan, told ThePrint in an interview, taking a dig at Safran. His argument is that the three companies he mentioned have continued to develop multiple engines on their own and have a proven history.The plans for a new engine to power the AMCA were put out in 2013, with three players showing interest—GE, Safran and Rolls-Royce.Cut to 2026, the competition has narrowed down to Rolls-Royce and Safran.Under Phase 1 of the project, the initial lot of AMCA will be powered by the GE F414 engine, the same powerplant selected for the Tejas Mk-2.The indigenous 120 kN-class engine is intended for later AMCA variants under Phase 2. As per the plan, the AMCA is supposed to enter production by 2035-36.Defence sources said any delay in the new engine programme could strengthen the case for additional orders of the GE F414, which is already slated for production in India under a 80 percent technology-transfer arrangement between GE Aerospace and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).However, it is likely to be more of licence production rather than actual developmental capability.For Rolls-Royce, the AMCA engine project is about more than a single programme. The company says it wants India to become its fourth global propulsion hub after the UK, the US and Germany, supporting military and civil aerospace, naval propulsion and land-system power solutions from a common industrial ecosystem.Underling that even Dassault Aviation, the manufacturers of Rafale fighter jets which are powered by the Safran engine, have chosen Rolls-Royce engine or the latest Falcon business jet, Mukundan said the company sees India as a strategic partner.“We want to be a strategic partner to India. What do I mean by that? Essentially, we want to do everything that we do in our home markets, which is like the hub. We have got the UK, USA, and Germany. We are saying we want to create the fourth one in India, which means we will do everything in terms of propulsion,” he said.
