Can India write the software that runs its own jet engines?

Every Tejas fighter flying today carries an American engine whose digital brain India cannot open. The FADEC software governing the GE F404 (Tejas Mk1A) and F414 (Tejas Mk2) remains 100% under GE control as of 2025 — HAL cannot modify, upgrade, or access the source code without GE's consent.

Full Authority Digital Engine Control is the computer that runs everything a modern jet engine does: fuel flow, stator vane position, bleed valve position, engine starting. It analyses up to 70 input variables per second, and it does so with total authority — there is no manual backup. That is why redundancy is built in as two or more identical digital channels; if the whole FADEC fails, the engine fails. The software must also meet DO-178C airworthiness standards and resist cyber attack, with no vulnerabilities tolerated. Only seven nations possess this capability: the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Sweden and India.

India is on that list, but at the earliest rung. In July 2025 HAL's indigenous FADEC was cleared for flight test after ground-based evaluation; its functionality will now be validated aboard aircraft, with certification and operational deployment still pending. DRDO's Defence Avionics Research Establishment has built KADECU, a microprocessor-based real-time embedded FADEC with dual-channel redundancy, built-in test and sensor data validation. In September 2025 the Kaveri dry engine, carrying advanced digital controls, completed a performance test with unrestricted throttle movement, producing thrust in the 46–49 kN range for the Ghatak UCAV. GTRE's Kaveri 2.0, specified to include FADEC, targets parity with the F414 at 98 kN.

So India has demonstrated FADEC — but on its own developmental engines, not on the imported engines that power its frontline fleet. That is the gap. Even with substantial transfer of technology on the physical F414, FADEC software stays with GE. Without access to that intellectual property, HAL cannot independently design engine upgrades, modify performance parameters, or respond to operational needs without GE's approval — a dependency that runs the length of each aircraft's service life.

The gap persists because FADEC is a systems problem. Its foundations — real-time signal processing hardware, avionics-grade redundant electronics, engine sensor suites, fuel metering actuators, variable stator vane actuation, and above all certified, cyber-hardened software — must all mature together. India is producing most of these and has demonstrated the certification protocols.

Closing the gap means carrying HAL's cleared FADEC through flight validation to certification, and pairing it with an indigenous engine that needs no foreign brain.