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.
According to former Ambassador Arun Singh, who has been a member of the National Security Advisory Board and is a Fellow at the Carnegie India think tank that works on India-U.S. technology issues, many steps had been taken prior to the GE-F414 announcement that makes this case different from the last round of talks and the nuclear deal. A number of other agreements signed between India and the U.S. over the past decade, including the declaration of India as a “major defense partner” in 2016, the Strategic Trade Authorisation-1 (STA-1 Status) in 2018, the signing of four “foundational agreements” between the two militaries, have built trust between them. The launch of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) between National Security Advisors (NSAs) and Strategic Trade Dialogue set up between the two governments would help resolve any issues that crop up, he added.
