The engine order, seen costing around $1 billion, follows the Centre clearing a ₹62,000 crore deal to buy 97 more LCA Mark 1A fighters earlier this month
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd is set to sign a contract with US manufacturer GE Aerospace for an additional 113 GE-404 engines to power the light combat aircraft (LCA) it is building for the Indian Air Force, a person familiar with the matter said.
HAL, GE may ink deal for 113 more jet engines
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The engine order, seen costing around $1 billion, follows the Centre clearing a ₹62,000 crore deal to buy 97 more LCA Mark 1A fighters earlier this month, this person said. The IAF had initially ordered 83 Mk-1A fighters for ₹48,000 crore in February 2021. HAL had ordered 99 GE-404 engines to power these aircraft.
GE in March announced that it has delivered the first of these 99 engines to HAL. A total of 12 engines are expected in 2025 with 20 engines each expected to be delivered by GE every year to fulfill the 2021 contract.
The LCA Mk-1As will replace the IAF’s MiG-21 fighter jets that are set to retire in September.
The first Mk-1A jets were slated to be delivered in March, 2024 but the first delivery is expected only sometime this year. In February, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh criticized HAL saying he did not believe it could meet the air force’s critical requirements in the backdrop of the delay in the supply of the Mk-1A fighters.
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HAL is also negotiating with GE for the joint production of the GE-414 engines in India for the more advanced LCA Mk-2 programme. The deal will involve an 80% transfer of technology and is estimated to be worth around $1 billion.
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HAL is also negotiating with GE for the joint production of the GE-414 engines in India for the more advanced LCA Mk-2 programme. The deal will involve an 80% transfer of technology and is estimated to be worth around $1 billion.
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In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong case for building jet engines in the country, underlining the need for self-reliance in India’s efforts towards becoming a developed nation by 2047.
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.
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