New Delhi: Reliance Industries Limited and Rolls-Royce Friday announced their strategic intent to partner and offer capabilities for the design, development, manufacturing and delivery of a sovereign indigenous combat engine for India’s Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme.
This marks the formal foray of RIL into the defence space.
As part of the partnership, Reliance and Rolls-Royce will explore the formation of a dedicated Aerospace Gas Turbine Complex that will be a centre of excellence for power and propulsion technology in India, a joint statement issued by the two companies said.
The partnership will offer a compelling proposition for joint development of the AMCA engine in India, bringing together world-leading technology and industrial execution capabilities, it said.
India is looking at developing a 120 kilonewton (kN) engine to power the AMCA aircraft. The front runner for this project is Safran. However, Rolls-Royce has now given a very competitive offer in terms of technology transfer and IP rights, which is being considered by the Indian government.
“India’s strategic autonomy requires sovereign capability in critical technologies. Our intent with Rolls-Royce is to combine their world-leading expertise in advanced propulsion with Reliance’s technology, manufacturing, scale and execution capabilities to build an indigenous aero-engine ecosystem in India.
“Together, we aim to build an enduring national capability that can make India self-reliant and, over time, globally competitive in advanced propulsion technologies,” Anant Ambani, Executive Director at RIL said.
Tufan Erginbilgiç, CEO, Rolls-Royce said that together with their existing partnerships and capabilities in India, this partnership with RIL marks a major milestone towards building a robust, self-reliant aerospace ecosystem in the country.
By combining Rolls-Royce’s global leadership in engines with the established industrial strengths of Reliance, the Aero Gas Turbine Complex will build sovereign, end-to-end Indian capability across design, development, manufacturing, testing, production and through-life support.
This will also unlock opportunities to explore wider collaborations across defence, civil aerospace, and new power and propulsion systems, the statement said.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)