The jet engine technology deal announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the U.S. bears some resemblance to the India-U.S. Civil Nuclear Deal in the manner it was pushed through by Washington and New Delhi. However, experts say it will probably fare better than the nuclear deal in producing an actual commercial deal between General Electric and Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL) for the joint production of GE-F414 jet engines in India, given some of the preparatory moves taken, and the strong push by the U.S. administration to provide India technology currently only available to three other countries — Russia, U.K. and France.
As a result, the jet engine deal could defeat some of the scepticism around previous big ticket India-U.S. deals that didn’t result in a deal, like the NPCIL-Westinghouse MoU for six nuclear reactors in Andhra Pradesh first signed in 2009 and held up by Indian regulations, or the Petronet-Tellurian deal for investment in an LNG project in the U.S. signed in 2019, or even the previous round of negotiations between India and the U.S. over jet engine Transfer of Technology (ToT) that were held under the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) framework from 2012-2019 before being shelved over U.S. export regulations.
