Indian Navy has decided to shift from gas turbine engines of Ukrainian origin for its next-generation warships programs and shift to its own indigenous marine gas turbine engines for the medium class of warships while bigger warships will still carry on using American or British gas turbine engines.
Indian Navy has around 150 warships that are powered by Marine gas turbine engines that were supplied by the Ukrainian company Zorya-Mashproekt.
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Russia is working on its alternatives but Indian Navy is planning to develop local indigenous alternatives for the small to medium class of warships and seek license production for marine engines that are required for larger warships.
Indian Navy has begun the process and is having talks with Industrial partners in the country that have expertise in designing engines that can be used to develop small to medium class Marine engines in the country.
We have been told that many companies have shown interest in joint programs that the Navy wants to initiate and developing marine engines locally can be developed but the challenge will remain when it comes to gas turbine engines.
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DRDO’s Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine (KMGT) has been revived and work is on to develop an improved modified core that can support and sustain the power of 12MW for longer durations.
DRDO is also planning to develop a Marine engine based on the 110-120kN Class of engine that will be developed for the country’s AMCA program soon.
Navy and GTRE along with many private sector companies are confident that in the next decade, most of the Marine class of engines can be developed locally if appropriate funding is provided for research and development of the engines but developing a new class of gas turbine engines might take much longer and will need more investments.
