Navy, DRDO headed for a tug of war over Kaveri engine

The Navy wants a few of these engines to be provided to them to power some of their smaller ships. The engine – primarily an aeronautical one — has been tested successfully in Russia more than three years ago in a four-engine Ilyushin-76, in Russia. At its end, the DRDO had stated that these fully indigenous engines will be used for powering the heavier Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that it plans to develop. 

But the GTRE and its supervising director general (aeronautics), Dr K Tamilmani have so far demurred from entertaining the Navy’s request, for it requires at least two major modifications of Kaveri. Reason: the Navy is seeking less than 10 of these engines, which does not provide the scale of production for which GTRE can divert human and other resources. 

The two changes that the navalised version of Kaveri requires is on ‘thrust’ and ‘torque’ or the ability to turn on a smaller angle. The aeronautical Kaveri has a higher ‘thrust’ and a lower degree of ‘torque.’ 

The question that arises with a navalised version is that it does not require so much of thrust that an aircraft requires. The thrust poses the problem with the exhaust. How does the naval engine in a ship release its ‘exhaust’? 

The problem of torque or the angle of turn is also much higher in a ship as it need not take sharp turns that an aircraft does. 

These changes in the engine will raise the costs of development that will not be worthwhile with the navy requirement of small numbers of engines incurring smaller expenditure. The GTRE is unwilling to deploy its own resources for those engines, in turn.

But there are signals that the Navy is unwilling to give up its demand easily. Further ahead, one shall have to wait to see how this drama unfolds considering that for the first time in GTRE’s history some service actually wants to procure its engine.