LCA Tejas: The First Indigenous Aircraft to make an arrested Landing

On January 11, 2020, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas successfully landed on INS Vikramaditya. With this achievement, the LCA becomes the first aircraft to make an arrested landing on a naval ship.

Highlights

The DRDO (Defence Research Development Organisation) made LCA became the first indogenously made aircraft to land on an aircraft carrier. This makes India enter a select group of nations in the world to develop aircrafts that are capable of landing and taking off from an aircraft carrier deck, that is barely 200 metres wide. The elite countries that hold this capability includes US, China, UK, Russia and France.

The regular LCA demands 1 km of run way to make its landing. However, recently developed naval variant is capable to make its landing in a far less landing space, 100 metres and take off space of 200 metres.

Indian Military Aircrafts

Today, the Indian Air Force is operating Mirage-2000, HAL Tejas LCA, MIG 21, Sukhoi-30 MKI, MiG-27, SPECAT Jaguar and Rafale. The Tejas LCA was developed by HAL in the 1980s by borrowing technologies from Russia, France and Russia. The plan was to replace the ageing Soviet Union sourced MiG-21.

The step is important for India to encounter Chinese increased presence in the Indian Ocean Region. This will also help India achieve its Defence target of Rs 35,000 crore by 2024.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2020