A file photo of the Kaveri engine.

Bangalore: Key personnel from two global aircraft engine manufacturers who are competing to partner the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) in the joint design and development of the Kaveri engine for the indigenously built Light Combat Aircraft are here to hold joint as well as independent meetings with officials from the GTRE.

Snecma Moteurs of France and Russian combat aircraft design giant NPO-Saturn, both who are yet to reply to the GTRE's second (issued last December) request for proposal (RFP), are seeking to know the details and clarifications required. It is hoped that the meetings, meant to be debriefing sessions, would help resolve these issues.

In 2005, the GTRE, a Bangalore-based Ministry of Defence (MoD) research and development laboratory, realised that they could not independently develop a combat aircraft engine. They sent an RFP to three global engine manufacturers — Snecma Moteurs, NPO-Saturn and the U.S. Pratt and Whitney — looking to choose a partner who would join it in forming a 50:50 joint venture company (JVC) that would develop the Kaveri engine.

Declaring a two-month deadline for replies to the RFP, a timeframe that ended in October 2005, the GTRE said they wanted the resultant JVC to get working by January 2006.

But with the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (which will produce the Kaveri engine once it is developed) raising issues over the methodology to be employed during the production stage of the engine, the GTRE was forced to issue a revised RFP last December, seeking more details.

Both competitors (the second RFP was not sent to Pratt and Whitney) were unable to understand the clarifications sought by the GTRE in the revised RFP.

Talking to The Hindu during a recent visit, Jean Paul Bechat, Chief Operating Officer of the Safran Group (of which Snecma is a subsidiary company), said: "We don't understand what GTRE wants. We gave a full proposal to their RFP. We answered what we were asked." Both Snecma and NPO-Saturn want the JVC to be involved in not just engine design but with production as well; for it is here that the real business lies. As per estimates, around 300 Kaveri engines could be sold.

Mr. Bechat said: "We are interested in entering a full production programme. We have said that just designing an engine is not of interest to us. Just to undertake research on an engine, which we have anyway already done in the past, will be a waste. [The company] can't afford to spend money researching the same thing twice."

According to Mr. Bechat, the full developmental cost of a fighter aircraft engine like the Kaveri would cost around Euro 1 billion and take four to five years to fructify.

Currently, the Kaveri engine prototype K-9, a research and development effort undertaken by the GTRE, has been able to deliver 95 per cent of the desired thrust of 47 kilo Newton in stationary test bed conditions.

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