No ToT for American F404-GE-IN20 Engines, Working with DRDO for the new engine: HAL Chief

HAL, company Chairman, and Managing Director R. Madhavan has confirmed that GE Aviation supplied F404-IN-20 engine to be used on 123 (40+83) Tejas Mk1/Mk1A fleet will be brought, in off the shelf deal, without any Transfer of Technology (ToT) Clause for expected fresh orders for 100+ plus units soon that idrw.org had reported after discussion with the Indian Air force (IAF).

GE Aviation was early hesitant to approve ToT that could have granted locally assembly licensee to the HAL for its engines but Madhavan confirmed that the ToT clause was not included also due to an instance from the IAF that was not willing to foot the bill for the locally assembled jet engines and instead IAF is keen to focus on improving local maintainability and serviceability of the engines at its level.

HAL had proposed ToT of the F404-GE-IN20 Engines when it had given its initial bid of 56000 cores for 73 Tejas Mk1A and 10 Tejas Mk1 Trainer jets but after price negotiations, IAF was no longer interested in ToT of the F404-GE-IN20 Engines that helped it to reduce contract price after plans for the local assembly was dropped.

Madhavan said that DRDO is currently setting up an engine complex for manufacturing a jet engine in partnership with HAL to have its own engines instead of going for ToT for these engines. Madhavan said that a lot of foreign reserves are spent on getting this engine from foreign sources. Madhavan didn’t elaborate on which engine company plans to develop in partnership with DRDO and in which its thrust class and for which fighter jet it will be intended.

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