India’s Defense at Risk: How Engine Imports Threaten National Security and Self-Reliance
Chandigarh: Defence minister Rajnath Singh’s recent push to accelerate the indigenous development of the fifth generation stealth Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) has, yet again, spotlighted a major Indian vulnerability: the inability to design and series produce engines locally.
For despite recent advances in domestically developing a fighter, combat helicopters, varied missile systems, an array of networked and electronic warfare-enabled equipment and assorted drones, amongst other advanced materiel, India remains exclusively dependent on imported engines for all its home grown land, air and maritime platforms.
Consequently, this overarching – and some analysts argue crippling – reliance on foreign propulsion systems, has diminished operational readiness, delayed deployments, restricted exports, weakened strategic autonomy, limited upgrade possibilities and, above all, emasculated New Delhi’s aspirations as a self-reliant military power.
“No country possesses true command over a military platform without mastering its propulsion systems. It is akin to owning the form but without the heart,” asserted retired defence analyst Major General A.P. Singh.
Moreover, India’s reliance on imported engines, he said, represented a strategic liability that eroded its military self-sufficiency (atmanirbharta). And though indigenous engine development may be time-intensive and initially expensive, it remained indispensable to achieving strategic autonomy, he emphasised.
It is universally accepted in all militaries that engines are the core of any combat platform – especially combat aircraft-defining power, range, and mission effectiveness; and any delays or disruptions in their supply undermines entire armament programmes, eroding deterrence and compromising national security.
Moreover, mastering propulsion technology in the 21st century is not merely a technical milestone – it is the foundational prerequisite for sovereign defence capability and credible power projection.
Nonetheless, India’s lack of indigenous engine development has left critical military programmes vulnerable to external pressure and geopolitical leverage. For instance, the ongoing delay in the supply of General Electric’s GE-F404IN20 afterburning turbofan engines for the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) had disrupted production timelines and compromised operational readiness.
A cursory audit of India’s military hardware reveals the sobering reality of its total dependence on imported engines or those series built locally via joint ventures with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
Beyond the flagship Tejas LCA, the Indian Air Force’s (IAFs) HTT-40 basic trainer relies on US-made Honeywell TPE331-12B turboprop engines. The ‘Dhruv’ Advanced Light Helicopter (LCH), ‘Prachand’ Light Combat Helicopter, and other LCH variants are powered by Shakti 1H1 turboshaft engines, co-developed by France’s Safran and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Even the TAPAS-BH-201/Rustom-II Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (MALE-UAV) operates with twin Russian NPO Saturn 36MT turboprop engines.
The Indian Army’s (IAs) Arjun main battle tank is powered by German MTU MB 838 Ka-501 diesel engines paired with RENK RK 304 transmissions, while the indigenous Zorawar light tank – recently trialed for high-altitude deployment – is expected to replace its original 760hp US-made Cummins VTA903E-T760 engine with the more powerful 1,000hp Cummins Advanced Combat Engine (ACE).
Likewise, the Indian Navy remains entirely reliant on foreign propulsion systems.
Russian, Ukrainian, German, and US engines drive all its in-house submarines, frontline frigates, destroyers, tankers and troopships. Many domestically built patrol boats, corvettes, fast attack craft, and auxiliary vessels too operate on French SEMT Pielstick and German MTU Friedrichshafen engines.
“This blanket dependence on imported propulsion systems – despite decades of indigenous effort – reflects a strategic vulnerability,” said retired Brigadier Rahul Bhonsle, of the New Delhi-based Security Risks consultancy. Without sovereign engine-making capability, India’s defence autonomy remains incomplete. This dependence also drives up development costs and leaves critical programs exposed to geopolitical disruptions, such as those triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, he added.
The nearly four decade-long and costly, but ultimately futile, effort by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to develop the GTX-35VS Kaveri afterburning turbofan engine for the Tejas LCA, exposed deep pitfall in India’s indigenous military propulsion capabilities.
Initially sanctioned in March 1989 with a budget of ₹382.81 crore and a target completion date of end-1996, the Kaveri programme showed early promise, but faltered thereafter. Kaveri prototypes failed critical high-altitude trials in Russia in 2004 due to excess weight, poor thrust-to-weight ratio, and persistent reliability and thermal issues under sustained high-performance conditions.
In 2005, the Ministry of Defence revised the project cost to Rs 2,839 crore and extended its deadline to 2009, allowing GTRE to address Kaveri’s technical shortcomings. Thus, GTRE attempted to redesign Kaveri with an 81kN thrust and proposed ambitious spinoffs like the Kaveri Derivative Engine (KDE) for tanks, locomotives, ships, and the Ghatak unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) – but little materialised.
Around 2010, the MoD surprisingly conceded Kaveri’s overwhelming challenges – technological complexity, inadequate manpower, subpar testing infrastructure, and denial of foreign technologies. But despite this, GTRE persisted in pursuing its Kaveri goal in its similar manner but expecting different results in a pattern that reflected institutional inertia rather than strategic adaptation.
A 2016 revival attempt with French engine-maker Snecma – aimed at co-developing the Kaveri as part of the mandatory offset obligations linked to the IAF’s procurement of 36 Dassault Rafale fighters – also failed, as noted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its 2024 report. Safran, Snecma’s parent company, even proposed developing an entirely new engine for the Tejas, but the DRDO is believed to have declined the offer – driven more by institutional pride than pragmatism – allowing yet another opportunity to slip through India’s grasp.
Meanwhile, the perils of imported engine dependency were reinforced recently when GE delayed the delivery of its F404-IN20 engines for the upgraded Tejas Mk1A by over a year – stalling production and affecting the IAF’s operational efficiency. Under a $716-million deal inked in August 2021, GE was to supply 99 engines to HAL beginning March 2024. However, the first engine arrived only in April 2025 as part of the initial batch of 12 engines to be supplied by the year-end, delayed by what GE called “unprecedented supply chain pressures,” including issues with a South Korean component vendor.
With timelines disrupted, a besieged HAL activated a contingency plan – repurposing Category B (used) engines for flight tests and quality checks for the Mk1A fighter. But despite that, no Mk1A aircraft had yet been delivered to the IAF, provoking biting criticism from Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh, who, at the CII Annual Business Summit on May 29, remarked that he could not recall a single HAL project being delivered on time.
In this image released by @SpokespersonMoD via X on May 27, 2025, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approved the Execution Model for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme. The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) will lead the project in partnership with Indian industry. Photo: X/@SpokespersonMoD via PTI Photo.
He further criticised HAL for inking IAF contracts with unrealistic timelines and cited continued delays in the Tejas Mk1, the absence of a Mk2 prototype, and the lack of a demonstrator for the AMCA. “We need to be now-ready to be future-ready,” Singh stressed, warning that wars were won by actually equipping the military, not just planning for the future. On several earlier occasions too Singh had similar castigated HAL for its innumerable inefficiencies and inability to meet delivery schedules.
But HALs and the IAFs miseries endured.
Negotiations with GE on HAL locally producing their more powerful F414 engine to power the Tejas Mk2 and the AMCA, had reportedly stalled over disputes related to technology transfer, intellectual property rights, and cost-sharing. Despite a framework agreement regarding the F-414 power packs agreed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2023 US visit, follow-up talks had stalled.
GE is reportedly demanding an additional $500 million, pushing the F-414 deal’s cost to $1.5 billion, and remained reluctant to share critical ‘hot section’ engine technologies like single-crystal turbine blades, thermal barrier coatings, and advanced cooling channels—all vital for thrust-to-weight optimisation and durability.
India, for its part, continues to insist on a deep transfer of technology as a prerequisite for any meaningful progress toward long-term self-reliance. However, this persistent impasse now threatens the timelines of future Indian Air Force (IAF) platforms, most notably the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).
The stakes are high: the IAF’s fighter squadron strength has declined to around 30, well below the sanctioned 42.5 squadrons. Compounding the crisis, at least two squadrons of legacy MiG-21 ‘Bis’ aircraft are slated for imminent retirement-airframes that have already exceeded their Total Technical Life (TTL) and remained in service primarily to numerically maintain squadron strength.
Military jet engines remain amongst the most complex and strategically vital technologies in modern defence. Their development demands mastery over high-precision metallurgy, extreme thermal tolerance, advanced manufacturing expertise and decades of uninterrupted research.
But India’s fragmented defence research and development ecosystem, typified by poor inter-agency coordination between the DRDO, GTRE, and HAL had stymied progress in this vital field. Institutional silos, overlapping mandates, and minimal private-sector participation had further created a closed environment ill-suited for rapid innovation. The private sector – central to engine development ecosystems in Western countries like the US, France and UK, has remained largely excluded from India’s propulsion programmes, stunting innovation and limiting technological progress.
Compounding these challenges is India’s chronic over-reliance on foreign collaborations. And though the MoD and the IAF have intermittently explored engine co-development ventures with France and the UK – other than the US-these have consistently failed to move beyond preliminary talks.
Without access to critical engine technologies, India’s ambitions to emerge as a global defence exporter will remain constrained. Efforts to market the Tejas to foreign air forces, for instance, would be contingent on US approval for engine re-exports, undermining India’s claims of strategic autonomy. In contrast, countries like China, France, and the US, with fully indigenous engine ecosystems, can export complete platforms freely – an option still out of reach for India, both now and in the foreseeable future.
A cross-section of defence and IAF veterans maintain that India’s failure in developing advanced jet engines is not merely a technical challenge, but also a political one.
Its defence budgeting remains fragmented, project-based, and short-term, lacking the sustained, long-horizon investment strategies that have propelled Western and Chinese engine programmes to success. Crucially, there has been no consistent or forceful political and MoD push to prioritise engine development, and strategic clarity on the critical importance of engine self-reliance, remains absent at the highest levels of leadership.
If India is serious about closing this critical capability gap, it will require far more than slogans echoing “Atmanirbhar Bharat.”
Achieving true engine self-reliance demanded deep structural reforms, unwavering political commitment, and the deliberate construction of a competitive innovation ecosystem – one that fully integrated private industry, academic institutions, and sincerely coordinated defence research and development efforts.
Without such a fundamental transformation, India’s engine ambitions and with them its overall strategic autonomy will remain grounded.
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