GTRE GTX-35VS Kaveri

GTX-35VS Kaveri
GTRE GTX-35VS Engine on the Testbed
Type	afterburning turbofan
National origin	India
Manufacturer	Gas Turbine Research Establishment
First run	1996
Major applications	HAL Tejas
Number built	9
Program cost	estimated more than US$ 640 million

The GTRE GTX-35VS Kaveri (Sanskrit: कावेरी) is an afterburning turbofan project developed by the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), a lab under the DRDO in Bangalore, India. An Indian design, the Kaveri was originally intended to power production models of the HAL Tejas fighter, also known as the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) being built by the Aeronautical Development Agency. However, the Kaveri programme failed to satisfy the necessary technical requirements or keep up with its envisaged timelines and was officially delinked from the Tejas programme in September 2008.

Snecma, on a tie up with DRDO, is slated to revive and certify the engine as part of the offsets deal for 36 Dassault Rafale jets purchased by India.

In 1986, the Indian Defence Ministry's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was authorized to launch a programme to develop an indigenous powerplant for the Light Combat Aircraft. It had already been decided early in the LCA programme to equip the prototype aircraft with the General Electric F404-GE-F2J3 afterburning turbofan engine, but if this parallel program was successful, it was intended to equip the production aircraft with this indigenous engine.

The DRDO assigned the lead development responsibility to its Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), which had some experience in developing jet engines. It had developed the GTX37-14U after-burning turbojet, which first ran in 1977, and was the first jet engine to be designed entirely in India. A turbofan derivative, the GTX37-14UB, followed. The GTRE returned to turbojet technology with the greatly redesigned, but unsatisfactory, GTX-35.

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