New Delhi: The Naval variant of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)-Mk1 on Saturday successfully completed its maiden arrested landing on board aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.
“After completing extensive trials on the Shore Based Test Facility (SBTF), Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) developed LCA Navy did an arrested landing on INS Vikramaditya successfully today January 11, 2020 at 10:02 hours,” the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) said in a statement.
Commodore Jaideep Maolankar did the maiden landing, it added.
“Captain Dahiya was the Landing Safety Officer (LSO) and Cdr Vivek Pandey Test Director on ship whereas Gp Capt Kabadwal and Cdr Ankur Jain were monitoring the aircraft through telemetry from SBTF, the DRDO added.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in a tweet said, “Extremely happy to learn of the maiden landing of DRDO developed LCA Navy on INS Vikramaditya. This successful landing is a great event in the history of Indian Fighter aircraft development programme. Congratulations to Team @DRDO_India & @indiannavy for this achievement.”
Secretary, Department of Defence R&D & Chairman DRDO Dr G Satheesh Reddy has congratulated DRDO, Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Indian Navy, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Directorate General of Aeronautical Quality Assurance (DGAQA) teams.
“With this feat, the indigenously developed niche technologies specific to deck-based fighter operations have been proven, which will now pave the way to develop and manufacture the twin engine deck-based fighter for the Indian Navy,” the Indian Navy said in a tweet.
LCA Navy Arrested Landing on-board INS Vikramaditya @drajaykumar_ias @DRDO_India @indiannavy pic.twitter.com/gqGuqvudQw
— India Sentinels (@indiasentinels) January 11, 2020
Last year in December Navy Chief Adm Karambir Singh said that the DRDO had offered to develop a new twin engine deck-based fighter for the Navy based on the experience of the Naval LCA and it should be ready by 2026.
Naval LCA is designed with stronger landing gears to absorb forces exerted by the ski jump ramp during take-off, to be airborne within 200m and land within 100m as against 1000m required for normal runways.
The Navy currently operates Russian Mig-29K fighters from INS Vikramaditya.
