Indian Military

[PTI] The maiden test flight of the most advanced of the nine ‘Tejas’ aircraft was today successfully carried out, bringing the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme “very close” to the Initial Operations Clearance. It is the ninth test vehicle to join the flight line to undertake development flight trials of the LCA Tejas towards operational clearance for induction in the IAF by the end of the year, Defence Research Development Organisation said.

“Successful, copy book maiden test flight of Limited Series Production-3 (LSP-3) is significant on many counts,” it said in a statement. “With this successful flight, the LCA (Tejas) programme is very close to the Initial Operations Clearance, which is to be completed by December 2010. The remaining effort is mostly the flight testing and demonstration of sensors and weapon performance,” it said.

“This is the culmination of the efforts of the Tejas Team which included members from HAL, IAF, DRDO labs and PSUs coordinated by ADA,” Director, Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) P S Subramanyam said.

The LSP-3 is the quantum jump in terms of the equipment fit on the aircraft and is almost the final configuration including the new air-data computers, multi-mode radar, new communication and navigation equipment and radar warning receiver. The test aircraft was flown by Wg Cdr G Thomas of the National Flight Test Centre at ADA. As per procedure the first flight was accompanied by a chase aircraft which was a Tejas Trainer.

The flight took off from HAL airport in Bangalore and all the flight’s objectives were met within the duration of 52 minutes, DRDO said. “With this flight the total number of test flights accumulated across nine test vehicles of Tejas programme has reached 1,350 and has logged about 800 hrs of flight,” it said.