The Hindu : National : Tejas crosses a milestone

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Thursday, Feb 05, 2009
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National

Tejas crosses a milestone

Ravi Sharma

BANGALORE: In a milestone, a Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas took off from here and for the first time dropped live stores (bombs) at a firing range.

The dropping of two 25-pounder bombs, with one striking the target and the other falling within the inner 25 yard circle, was undertaken by Prototype Vehicle-3 of the LCA programme.

The successful dropping of the light, marker bombs will enable the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) – designers of the fly-by-wire LCA – to not only prove the working of the aircraft’s flight control software for weapon drops and aiming, but also take forward the LCA’s weaponisation programme.

ADA officials said the flight control system software had to recognise and adjust for the dropping and still maintain the highly unstable flying platform’s handling qualities.

The software had to take into effect the added stores, asymmetric drops, increased sensitivity of the aircraft’s controls and still make sure that the movement of the aircraft’s centre of gravity was still well within limits.

Following this success, the ADA is planning to do as many similar sorties dropping both 25-pounder and 3-kg bombs over the next three days, analyse the results and then prepare for the next stage of the weaponisation programme.

The next stage of weapon trials will see the ADA and the Air Force taking the Tejas to Jamnagar in Gujarat, hopefully by the end of the month. Jamnagar has been chosen as its cross runways will allow the undertaking of both weapon and cross wind trials.

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