Revival of Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine KMGT

Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine (KMGT)

Nearly 15 years ago, In July 2008, DRDO has tested a 12 MW marine gas turbine. The engine was installed on to the Marine Gas Turbine test bed at Indian Navy Facility in Vishakapatnam. The engine has been tested to its potential of 12 MW at ISA SL 35°C condition, which is the requirement of Indian Navy for propelling the SNF (Rajput) class of ships. The engine was developed using the core of the Kaveri engine. GTRE has added low-pressure compressor and turbine as a gas generator and designed a free power turbine to generate shaft power for the maritime application. The engine has been named as Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine (KMGT).

Irony is that even after 15 years of demonstrating the Marine engine capability India has not been able to field its production ready marine engine which could power the Indian Navy warships. The government back then did not show confidence on the Kaveri’s marine engine and preferred to go for a completely imported engine from General Electric & Zorya Mashproekt engine.

Indian Navy’s dependency on imported marine engine

Currently most of the Indian Navy’s warship uses the marine gas turbines from Ukraine’s Zorya as their primary source of propulsion. These warships include Veer class missile corvettes, surviving Rajput class destroyers, Delhi Class destroyers, Talwar Class frigates and newly commissioned Visakhapatnam class destroyers.

Four more Talwar class frigates of Russian design are under construction at shipyards in Russia and Goa, also use engines from the Zorya facility. To power all these warships, Indian Navy needs more than 130 marine gas turbine engines and few spare turbines. Besides, Navy is also going to face problem in overhauling or regular maintenance of these engines. Usually, a gas turbine is overhauled after running for close to 30,000 hours.

Apart from the Ukrainian engine, Indian Navy heavily relies on the General Electric (GE) LM2500 marine gas turbine. The engine is integrated with indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, 3 Shivalik-class frigates, 7 stealth frigates being built under Project 17A.

Revival of Marine Gas Turbine engine

The Kaveri Marine engine is going to be crucial for Indian navy as it is planning to build nearly 200 warships indigenously. At the same time, Russia-Ukraine war has again brought back the attention on indigenous engine development. On March 13, 2022, the Russian military attacked the Zorya-Mashproekt gas turbine complex in southern Ukraine, a complex that supplies marine engine to Indian Navy.

While the 12 MW KMGT may not be sufficient to power bigger warships, but it can power small vessels with displacement of up to 2500 tons. As per few reports, the 12MW Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine (KMGT) is expected be ready by 2023. DRDO is also planning to develop a more powerful marine engine based on 110-120 kN class engine being developed for AMCA program. It’s the right time that MoD and Indian Navy should start investing on building a more powerful engine to power even bigger warship.

Recently, the German engine maker MTU has refused to provide its propulsion for Chinese submarine which its building for Thailand and Pakistan. Therefore, its is important India should accelerate the development of Marine Gas Turbine engine to decouple its dependency from foreign firms.


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