Four decades, thousands of test hours and one big milestone: India’s Kaveri engine story

India's homegrown Kaveri dry engine has come through a round of high-altitude and flight trials in Russia, posting a peak dry thrust of 48.5 kilonewtons, well above the roughly 46 kN it was meant to deliver. The engine, built by the Defence Research and Development Organisation's Gas Turbine Research Establishment, is meant to power Ghatak, India's planned stealth unmanned combat aerial vehicle.The Kaveri Derivative Engine is a non-afterburning version of the original Kaveri, built for aircraft that do not need the additional thrust an afterburner provides. Dry thrust simply refers to thrust generated without one. The trials ran at two Russian institutions, the Central Institute of Aviation Motors and the Gromov Flight Research Institute. At the former, the engine was subjected to conditions mimicking high-altitude flight, where air pressure and temperature both drop sharply.