According to those acquainted with the situation, India is extending its defense alliances outside of the US by collaborating with manufacturers from at least three other nations to produce fighter jet engines in an effort to bridge capacity gaps in the face of escalating regional tensions.
Senior officials, who asked not to be named since the talks are secret, stated that India wants to get the project underway as soon as possible and that the engines being evaluated are from the UK, France, and Japan. The Defense Research and Development Organization, India’s military research agency, will assess the offers, they continued.
When senior defense ministry officials visited the UK in April, the London-based defense manufacturing behemoth Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC offered to jointly produce and transfer technology to India, according to one of the officials.
According to the sources, discussions with Safran SA also gained traction because the aerospace firm based in Paris is amenable to pooling intellectual property rights and transferring technology.
They said that, without naming a potential partner, Japan had made a similar offer in May.
Earlier this month, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh met with his Japanese counterpart in New Delhi to discuss possible areas of cooperation, such as the development of tanks and aircraft engines.
Requests for response from Japan’s defense ministry and India’s ministry of external affairs were not answered. Additionally, the businesses cited in the article did not respond to inquiries.
According to the people, the engines would power India’s twin-engine fighters that are now under development. The Ministry of Defense will also take steps to obtain government approval shortly.
By acquiring jet fighters from other countries and bringing production in-country through collaborative initiatives with top foreign arms manufacturers, India has been working to modernize its air force.
Also check:- PRAGATI meeting: PM Modi reviews Rs 62,000 crore infra projects and urges their timely completion
To replace its old, primarily Russian-made fleet, India earlier this week for the first time permitted private domestic companies to design and construct cutting-edge airplanes.
Since 2023, the South Asian country has also been in negotiations with Boston-based General Electric to produce GE F414 engines together, although the negotiations are taking longer than anticipated. Due to significant delays in the delivery of engines that power the nation’s domestically produced single-jet fighters, India penalized GE last year.
At a business gathering on Thursday, India’s Air Force Chief AP Singh issued a dire warning, stating that the country’s defense readiness is seriously threatened by delays in acquiring vital weaponry. He emphasized that India must design, develop, and manufacture enough weapons domestically, saying, “Not for a single project that I can think of that has been completed on time.”
India’s drive to produce jet engines is part of a larger initiative to protect the supply chain for vital defense hardware, which is a significant military withdrawal from the three-year-old conflict in Ukraine.
In a separate effort to lower import costs and create jobs domestically, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been attempting to increase defense production domestically.
According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India is the biggest importer of weapons worldwide and has been looking more and more to buy from US and French manufacturers.
