Day 2: GE+HAL to make Tejas engines; INDUS X launched for defense, technology cooperation
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: General Electric’s subsidiary GE Aerospace and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd will jointly produce fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force (IAF)’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mk-II, popularly known as Tejas, India’s indigenously-developed, single-engine, fourth-generation, high-agility, multirole, supersonic light combat aircraft.
In a landmark announcement, GE Aerospace said this on Thursday on the second day of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first State Visit to the US at the invitation of President Joe Biden, the media reported.
“The agreement includes the potential joint production of GE Aerospace’s F414 engines in India, and GE Aerospace continues to work with the US government to receive the necessary export authorization for this,” the American firm said in a statement.
It described the Memorandum of Understanding with HAL as a “key element” in strengthening defense cooperation between India and the US.
“This is a historic agreement made possible by our longstanding partnership with India and HAL,” said H Lawrence Culp Jr, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of GE and CEO of GE Aerospace.
Besides, the India-United States Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS X) was launched on Wednesday in Washington to expand the strategic technology partnership and defense industrial cooperation between the two governments, business communities, and academic institutions.
This comes after a commitment by the Indian and the US National Security Advisors in January 2023 to launch an “innovation bridge” to connect both the countries’ defense start-ups as part of the joint initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), Anurag Bajpai, Joint Secretary (DIP) in the Ministry of Defense (MoD), said.
In his welcome remarks on ‘Investing in the Future of US-Indian Defence Relations’, he hailed the launch of the iCET as a landmark event in the India-US relationship and said it was an opportune moment as the leaders of the two largest and oldest democracies of the world meet in Washington.
In a keynote address, Frank Kendall, US Secretary of the Air Force, emphasized the enormous potential for start-ups of both nations to collaborate in deep tech innovations, especially in space and Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains.
The event also saw a first-of-its-kind joint showcasing innovative technologies by start-ups of the two countries. Fifteen Indian and 10 US start-ups, from multiple domains of maritime, AI, autonomous systems, and space, showcased their technologies to stakeholders from both sides.
US Congressman Ro Khanna, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, and as co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, and Radha Iyengar Plumb, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, US Department of Defense, were among those who visited this exhibition.
The two sides have also agreed upon the need to standardize Indo-US certifications for technologies developed by the defense innovation ecosystems of both countries, accelerating their absorption.
Likewise, in a “Mentor-Protégé Partnerships for Startups”, their defense firms will identify opportunities to establish formal and informal mentoring with start-ups to assist with market access, business strategy, and technology know-how, elaborated the MoD. Their defense firms may explore options for supply chain collaborations with start-ups.
On the academic partnership, Pennsylvania State University, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Madras, and IIT-Kanpur could lead best practice workshops with Indian and American universities and accelerator partners, like laboratories and technology hub (T-HUB) to exchange best practices in defense innovation, fielding, and commercialization.
