Pictured is an Indian Air Force Su-30 MKI multi-role combat aircraft in flight in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan on 10 January 2023. Credit: Shutterstock/viper-zero.

India’s Cabinet Committee on Security, a high level branch of government, approved the purchase of 240 AL-31FP engines for the Air Force’s Su-30 MKI fighter jet fleet on 2 September 2024.

Hindustan Aeronautics – an indigenous supplier licenced to build the Russian Sukhoi-30 aircraft since October 2000 – will be awarded R260m ($3.1m) to deliver the engines over an eight-year period beginning in 2025.

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Currently, the service operates 271 units of the twin-engine aircraft. Although 49 units were purchased from Russia’s Irkut corporation between 1997 and 2008, 222 were produced by the Indian licencee at its Koraput facility in the state of Odisha, east of the Indian subcontinent.

IAF Su-30 MKI engine

The Su-30 MKI fleet has passed 25-years of service. Though there has been maintenace, repair and overhaul of the aircraft in that time. 

India first achieved indigenously overhauling capability of the Su-30 MKI fighter jet – the Air Force received its first domestically overhauled unit in October 2018.

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The Su-30MKI is powered by two Al-31FP turbojet engines. Each engine generates a full afterburn thrust of 12,500kgf. The power plant, equipped with thrust vector control, provides a maximum speed of Mach 1.9 in horizontal flight and a rate of climb of 300 metres per second.

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The aircraft has a maximum unrefuelled flight range of 3,000km. The in-flight refuelling system of Su-30MKI provides a maximum range of 8,000km with two refuellings.

Make in India

According to a statement from the government, around 54% of the content of the engines will be ‘Made in India’ – as the government’s defence industrial slogan goes.

According to GlobalData intelligence, India’s offset guidelines were amended, and threshold value was raised to R20bn ($238m), in accordance with the government’s Make in India initiative.

Likewise, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) cleared $1.7bn for procurement programmes in 2015 and 90% of this is under the Make in India scheme.

Since then this has rapidly increased as GlobalData has found that when considering the budget for just military services in isolation, excluding acquisition funding from MoD civil requirements, the fiscal year 2023 funding accounts for 75% of the overall defence acquisition funding reserved for indigenous equipment which amounts to $14bn.

Notably, this reserved funding encompasses $6.3bn for already ordered 83 Tejas MK-1A multirole combat aircraft and funding for the indigenously developed Light Combat Helicopter, preliminary order for which was placed in 2022.