Podcast: India's Hunt for Domestic Marine Engines

The Armchair Perspectives Podcast explores how Indian engineering giants are working on a mission mode to produce powerful marine engines to power the Indian Navy’s advanced battleships

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The Indian Navy is preparing to sign contracts to induct a large number of powerful destroyers, stealth frigates, next generation missile corvettes, and a number of fleet support and offshore patrol vessels. But recent geopolitical events have threatened to torpedo the Navy's ambitious modernisation push.

The Russia-Ukraine war broke out in 2022, and in March that year, the Zorya-Mashproekt gas turbine complex, which manufactured marine engines for INS Surat and other destroyers, was severely bombed and destroyed by Russia. The facility halted production, leading to major disruption in the construction, maintenance and overhaul of gas turbines and diesel engines powering naval ships worldwide. 

The destruction of the facility was bad news for the Indian Navy. India does not have the capability to domestically produce the kind of marine engines that can power major frigates, destroyers or aircraft carriers. For a while, it seemed that India may have to depend exclusively on a small number of naval engine suppliers to produce new ships or maintain existing ones.

But intense indigenisation efforts made over the past two decades have begun to bear fruit. 

In this podcast, Armchair Perspectives explores how Indian engineering giants are working on a mission mode to produce powerful marine engines to power the Indian Navy’s advanced battleships, and how partnerships between domestic shipbuilding companies and overseas suppliers is establishing a knowledge base necessary to indigenise marine engine production in the future.

Here's the full transcript of this Armchair Perspectives podcast:

Hello and welcome to The Armchair Perspectives Podcast, your go to podcast for the latest commentaries and perspectives on military, societal and geopolitical developments in India and around the globe.

I am Jayant Chakravarti, your host for today.

Today's podcast is going to be about the Indian Navy and its quest to find indigenously-built marine engines to power its warships to fight and win naval battles of the future.

The Indian Navy is a major military force that guards 7,000 kilometres of coastline and several thousands of kilometres of the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

Such a Navy needs ships of high destructive potential and ones that can cover long distances at a time. Today, the Indian Navy has two aircraft carriers, more than a dozen large destroyers, about 15 frigates, two dozen corvettes and a large number of fleet support and smaller warships.

To grow its fleet and to modernise its frontline warships, the Navy has to constantly commission advanced destroyers and frigates to replace the ones that have become technologically obsolete. It has to deploy ships that bring in stealth, advanced radars and sensors, and weapon systems that not only outrange the enemy, but are also fast enough to defeat enemy defences.

Perhaps the most important component of any battleship is the engine that powers it. Modern naval engines are monstrous workhorses, delivering power outputs of several megawatts not just to propel thousands of tons of steel through the rough seas but also to power advanced combat, radar, and electronic warfare suites.

Let's take the example of INS Surat, a brand new destroyer that joined the Navy in 2025. The Surat is a 7,400 ton destroyer, one of four similar destroyers in service with the Navy. It has 300 officers and sailors, and carries 16 BrahMos anti-ship missiles, heavy torpedoes, 32 Barak 8 surface-to-air missiles, anti-submarine rocket launchers and a range of naval guns, missile launchers and heavy radar and sonar systems.

Being a large destroyer with significant offensive capability, the Surat has to venture out deep into the seas to conduct long-range patrols and missions, sometimes for about 45 days without refueling. To power this immense vessel to make it cover over 15,000 kilometres at a cruising speed of 18 knots, the Indian Navy chose two Ukrainian Zorya M36E gas turbines that come with four DT-59 reversible gas turbines.

The two Zorya M36E turbines deliver a total of about 80,000 horsepower, or about 66 megawatts of power, that propel INS Surat to a maximum speed of 56 kilometres per hour. This makes the destroyer among the fastest ships in the Navy, capable of chasing down enemy combatants over thousands of kilometers in the high seas.

That's not all. The Surat also needs high-performance engines that can power its massive generators, its combat management suite and power-hungry radar and sonar systems. It uses a pair of Bergen diesel engines that churn out 7.4 megawatts of power, and four Wartsila WCM-1000 generator sets, each of which delivers 1 MW of power.

India is now planning to build even larger destroyers for the Navy that will have more weapons, more powerful radars and sensors and higher endurance. It is also building a batch of six 1,400 ton next generation missile vessels that will have an endurance of 2000 kilometres. These will be powered by General Electric LM2500 gas turbines that churn out 25 MW of power each and also propel the Navy's Nilgiri-class and Shivalik-class frigates.

But recent events and crises have exposed the Navy's most critical vulnerability.

The Russia-Ukraine war broke out in 2022, and in March that year, the Zorya-Mashproekt gas turbine complex, which manufactured the gas turbines for INS Surat and other destroyers, was severely bombed and destroyed by Russia. The facility halted production, leading to major disruption in the maintenance and overhaul of gas turbine engines powering naval ships worldwide.

The destruction of the facility was bad news for the Indian Navy. India does not have the capability to domestically produce the kind of engines that can power major frigates, destroyers or aircraft carriers. For a while, it seemed that India may have to depend exclusively on a small number of naval engine suppliers to produce new ships or maintain existing ones.

But intense indigenisation efforts made over the past two decades have begun to bear fruit.

In May, the government-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited achieved a major breakthrough by successfully indigenising a 40 megawatt marine gas turbine engine. The complete localisation of the engine, though subject to rigorous testing and validation, will remove the country's dependence on suppliers like GE and Zorya-Mashproekt for engines for the Navy's frigates and destroyers.

Significant achievements have also been made to boost local production of smaller engines to power patrol vessels and corvettes of the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard.

The Gas Turbine Research Establishment, a laboratory of the Defence Research & Development Organisation, has developed a 12 MW gas turbine to propel small and mid-sized naval ships weighing up to 2,500 tons. The engine has undergone several dry tests but requires further testing and validation before it is fitted on ships for real-time testing and certification for naval use.

In April 2025, Kirloskar Oil Engines Limited signed a Rs 270 crore contract with the Indian Navy to design and develop prototypes of 6MW Medium Speed Marine Diesel Engines which would, in the future, be used for Main Propulsion and Power Generation on ships of the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard.

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Defence also signed a Rs 425 crore contract with Pune-based Bharat Forge Limited for the supply of 12 sets of 1.25 MW Marine Gas Turbine Generators that will be used to power critical combat systems and advanced weapon & sensors in next-generation missile vessels, frigates and destroyers.

The signing of these contracts signify that India is on the cusp of achieving complete self-sufficiency in producing marine gas turbines and generators of all types to power future naval ships.

The government has also given local Indian companies the license to manufacture advanced marine engines under contract from global engineering giants to gain crucial knowledge on designing, manufacturing and scaling propulsion systems for the Navy.

The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited presently manufactures and overhauls LM2500 gas turbines under licence from GE Aerospace, conducting full assembly, rigorous testing and validation of engines before delivering them to shipyards that manufacture advanced warships for the Navy. As many as 20 LM2500 gas turbines manufactured by HAL now power the aircraft carrier Vikrant, as well as P-17 and P-17A stealth frigates of the Indian Navy.

Goa Shipyard Limited is also licence-manufacturing the Rolls-Royce MTU Series 8000 diesel engines that deliver a power output of up to 10 MW and are presently fitted in Offshore Patrol Vessels deployed by the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard.

Breakthroughs made by the likes of BHEL, Bharat Forge and Kirloskar over the past year indicate that the government has responded decisively to the bombing of the Zorya-Mashproekt gas turbine complex. It is now signing contracts with government and private players to acquire critical propulsion systems of the Navy that now needs to expand rapidly to respond to growing geopolitical and military challenges.

Will India's next generation of naval destroyers, frigates and aircraft carriers get to field locally-developed and manufactured propulsion systems? We could get a definitive answer in the next few years.

Thanks for listening to the Armchair Perspectives Podcast. See you next time.

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