India and UK near pact on full-electric propulsion for four Navy LPDs
British officials said an inter-governmental agreement is due soon. GE Vernova and BHEL will build India’s first land-based test stand for integrated full-electric propulsion.
New Delhi2 min read
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India and the United Kingdom are close to signing an inter-governmental agreement to develop integrated full-electric propulsion for four Landing Platform Docks the Indian Navy plans to build in an Indian yard, British officials said on 26 August.
GE Vernova will take part. It has paired with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited to set up India’s first maritime land-based test facility for the system. The ships are meant to displace more than 6,000 tonnes and to run a full-electric architecture rather than a mechanical shaft line from diesel engines or gas turbines alone.
The IGA would give legal form to a Statement of Intent signed in Portsmouth on 28 November 2024, at the third meeting of the Joint Working Group on Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership. That note already committed both sides to design and development work for the Navy.
Full-electric propulsion puts generators on the ship and sends power through a switchboard to motors on the shafts. Designers can place the generators where the hull allows, rather than in a rigid line to a propeller. The same board can feed radars, electronic warfare suites and future high-draw sensors without a separate mechanical take-off. That is the reason navies want IFEP on large amphibious ships before they put it on destroyers and carriers.
The land-based test stand is the piece that decides whether the four LPDs slip on time. Electric plants fail in rooms, not in brochures. BHEL and GE Vernova will have to run the generators, drives and control software on the ground before a keel takes the kit. India has not had that room. The UK has, on Type 45 destroyers and Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, though those programmes also taught expensive lessons about power quality and harbour hotel load.
The propulsion IGA sits beside two other live UK-India defence files. British officials said a Lightweight Multirole Missile contract is in final stages and would be Thales’s second-largest LMM order after Ukraine. Rolls-Royce has separately offered a new 120-plus kilonewton engine for India’s Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, with full intellectual-property transfer, against a competing Safran bid. Those are not the LPD deal. They are the context: New Delhi is buying and co-developing several British systems at once.
No signing date was given beyond “very soon.” Until the IGA is on paper, the four LPDs remain a Navy requirement with a preferred plant, not a contracted ship. The test facility is the first physical object the partnership has to produce. If that hall is late, the docks will wait.
