General Electric to produce fighter jet engines for Indian Air Force; signs MoU with HAL

The F414 engines of General Electric Aerospace, a subsidiary of General Electric, will be co-produced in India, and power the indigenous Tejas fighter aircraft.

Published on: Jun 22, 2023, 14:59:35 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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General Electric Aerospace, a subsidiary of General Electric (GE), announced on Thursday it will co-produce its F414 engines in India, having signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), with the development coming amid prime minister Narendra Modi's ongoing state visit to the United States.

Washington DC, June 22 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets H. Lawrence Culp Jr, Chairman and CEO, General Electric and CEO, General Electric Aerospace, at White House in Washington DC, in USA on Wednesday. (via PIB)

The announcement from General Electric Aerospace, made through a press release, came a day after PM Modi's meeting with several top American business executives, including H Lawrence Culp Junior, Chairman and CEO General Electric, and CEO, General Electric Aerospace.

‘A major milestone’

Describing the agreement as a 'major milestone',' the subsidiary said the F414 engines will power India's indigenously-made Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mk2.

H Lawrence Culp Junior, the GE Aerospace CEO, said, “This is a historic agreement made possible by our long-standing partnership with India and HAL. We are proud to play a role in advancing President Biden and Prime Minister Modi's vision of closer coordination between the two nations.”

The F414 engines, he remarked, are ‘unmatched.’

GE Aerospace and India

In India, GE Aerospace has been present for more than 40 years, with engagements in engines, avionics, services, engineering, manufacturing, and local sourcing. Also, since 1986, it has been working with the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and the HAL on India's LCA project, first with the F404 engines, and then with both F404s and F414s.

It also operates two facilities in the country, one each in Bengaluru and Pune. While the John F Welch Technology Centre opened in Bengaluru in 2000, Pune hosts a multi-modal factory, which opened in 2015.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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