This system will meet the requirement of aerial targets of the Indian Armed Forces

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully conducted the flight test of the indigenously-developed High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT) Abhyas on Thursday.

The test was carried out from the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur off the coast of Odisha.

This unmanned system will meet the requirement of aerial targets of the Indian Armed Forces.

The DRDO had earlier achieved back-to-back success in flight testing of the indigenously developed Surface-to-Surface missile ‘Pralay’ on Wednesday and Thursday.

During the flight trial of Abhyas, high subsonic speed trajectory at a very low altitude with high endurance was demonstrated, said the Ministry of Defence.

Two boosters provided initial acceleration during launch and a small turbo jet engine is used to sustain high subsonic speed with long endurance.

"The indigenous data link designed by Bengaluru based Industry partner has been successfully flown and tested during the flight.

The performance of the system during the entire flight duration has been confirmed from the data captured by various Range instruments deployed," said the defence ministry.

The aircraft is controlled from a ground based controller and an indigenously developed MEMS based Inertial Navigation System along with the Flight Control Computer which helps it to follow the pre-designated path in a fully autonomous mode.

The system has been developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), bengaluru based DRDO laboratory along with other DRDO laboratories.