ABHYAS High Speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT)

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.