Report by Aarya Krishnan
India has taken another step to being ‘Atma Nirbhar’ in the realm of Defence.
On Friday, India successfully conducted a flight-test of its indigenously developed High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT) now named ABHYAS, from the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur off the coast of Bay of Bengal in Odisha.
HEAT was designed as well as developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) arm of DRDO as an aerial target for evaluation of various missile systems. The target aircraft is armed with MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) based Inertial Navigation System (INS) for steering along with the Flight Control Computer (FCC) for supervision and control. The vehicle is programmed for fully self-directed flight. The check-out of air vehicle can be done using laptop-based Ground Control Station (GCS). The air vehicle was launched using matching under-slung boosters which offer early acceleration to the vehicle. It is powered by a gas turbine engine to maintain a long durability flight at extremely high speed.
The flight test was done to check all parameters of the HEAT air vehicle, during which it achieved vehicle speed of 0.5 Mach. It required a flying altitude of 5 kilometer and displayed 2g turn capability (g is acceleration due to gravity. An observer on board the vehicle in this case, while performing a turn, will see objects falling to the floor at twice the normal acceleration of gravity) and endurance of 30 minutes. The performance of the target aircraft was observed through telemetry (the process of recording and transmitting the readings of an instrument) and various tracking devices including Radars and Electro Optical Tracking Systems (EOTS).
The target aircraft, once advanced, will meet the necessity of a High-speed Expendable Aerial Targets (HEAT) for the Indian Armed Forces. It will help flight teams fine-tune their weapon testing capabilities and will be a big boost to India’s indigenous weapons development & training programs.