Naval LCA makes successful landing on INS Vikramaditya

The naval version of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mark I executed its first successful arrested-hook landing onboard the aircraft carrier—INS Vikramaditya off the coast of Karwar on Saturday.

Commodore Jaideep Maolankar, a Chief Test Pilot serving with the National Flight Test Centre of the Tejas Programme made the successful landing at 10.02 am. The Indian Navy, which announced the successful landing in a tweet shortly after the test, added that the feat proved the indigenously developed niche technologies specific to deck-based fighter operations.

“This will now pave the way to develop and manufacture the twin-engine deck-based fighters for the Indian Navy,” India Navy spokesperson Vivek Madhwal said.

R Madhavan, the Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) pointed out that HAL’s contributions to the naval fighter included the landing gear, arrestor hook and support staff at SBTF.

Although the Navy did not comment on the specifics of the test landing, the arrestor-hook test landing at SBTF in September 2019 had shown the Tejas naval prototype decelerating from 131.7 knots to zero within a span of two seconds. The aircraft came to a full stop within a distance of 87 metres.