In News
- Successful flight test of ABHYAS – High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT) was conducted by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
Background
- ABHYAS-HEAT was developed by adopting DRDO’s Lakshya. Lakshya is a high-speed target drone system developed by DRDO. The first launch of ABHYAS was held in Chitradurga Aeronautical Testing Range in 2012.
ABHYAS – High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT)
- The vehicle can be used as a target for evaluation of various missile systems.
- Abhyas is designed & developed by Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), DRDO.
- The air vehicle is launched using twin underslung boosters.
- It is powered by a small gas turbine engine and has MEMS based Inertial Navigation System (INS) for navigation along with the Flight Control Computer (FCC) for guidance and control.
- The vehicle is programmed for fully autonomous flight.
- Abhyas is designed for autonomous flying with the help of an autopilot.
- The check out of the air vehicle is done using a laptop based Ground Control Station (GCS).
- Abhyas has RCS, Visual and IR augmentation systems required for weapon practice.
- The fuselage consists of five sections, namely the nose cone, equipment bay, fuel tank bay, air intake bay and tail cone.
Achievements during the test
- The user requirement of 5 km flying altitude
- Vehicle speed of 0.5 mach
- Endurance of 30 minutes and 2g turn capability
- At the end of its launch phase the burnout booster rockets are ejected and the main gas-turbine engine powers the vehicle during cruise phase.
Lakshya Mean target in Sanskrit
- Is an Indian remotely piloted high speed target drone system developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) of DRDO.
- A variant Lakshya-1 is used to perform discreet aerial reconnaissance of battlefield and target acquisition.
Aeronautical Development Establishment
- Aeronautical Development Establishment is a laboratory of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation.
- Located in Bangalore, its primary function is research and development in the field of military aviation.
- Successful projects include
- Lakshya (an aerial target),
- Nishant (a reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle),
- Nirbhay(a subsonic cruise missile),
- Flight simulators for (LCA, Ajit, Kiran, Mig-21) and
- Avionics packages for Tejas-LCA (display and FCC).
It earlier worked on Sparrow (mini-uav) and Ulka (aerial target).
Source: PIB and drdo.gov.in
