Smart Anti Airfield Weapon successfully flight tested near Pokhran

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has successfully tested indigenously developed light weight glide bomb Smart Anti Airfield Weapon (SAAW) dropped from an Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft. Total of three tests with different release conditions and ranges were conducted at Chandan range near Pokhran in Rajasthan.
Test Details: Total of three tests with eighth round of developmental trails with different release conditions were conducted during 16 to 18 August 2018 and all the mission objectives have been achieved. During the test, weapon system was integrated with live warhead. It successfully destroyed targets with high precision.

Smart Anti Airfield Weapon (SAAW)

SAAW project is India’s first fully indigenous anti-airfield weapon project sanctioned by Government in September 2013. It was indigenously developed by state-run Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in collaboration with IAF and the Research Centre Imarat (RCI). It will be inducted soon into the Armed Forces.
SAAW is long-range lightweight high precision-guided anti-airfield weapon. It is 120 kg smart weapon capable of engaging ground targets with high precision up to range of 100 km. It is designed for deep penetration with high degree of precision and is armed with high-explosive warhead, which is usually very difficult to achieve operationally with simple gravity bombs.
It is meant to deal debilitating damage to ground infrastructure such as runways, taxi ways, aircraft hangars and bunkers among other things. Depending on operational requirements, it can also be used against other ground targets to give Indian forces enhanced area-denial capabilities, like taking out ground infrastructure.
The guided bomb is considered to be one of the world-class weapons system. It is said to have higher precision and much cheaper compared with missiles. It can be integrated into varied types of multi role fighter jets of IAF such as MiG, Sukhoi Su-30 and ground attack SEPECAT Jaguar. SAAW’s deep penetration capabilities and high explosive warhead carrying capacity will enhance capability of IAF to easily hit targets across border without putting pilot and aircraft at risk.

Anti-airfield weapons

They are critical in war-like scenarios, since they help to give debilitating blow to adversarial air forces. These high-explosive warheads are meant to cause maximum damage possible to runways and other key infrastructure, in way that prevents quick repair. If successful, attack using such bombs render airfield useless, grounding all the war planes that are based at that air field.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2018