Indian Navy’s first indigenously designed and developed 4th plus generation combat aircraft designed to operate from the decks of aircraft carriers took-off from Ski-Jump facility of Shore Based Test Facility at INS Hansa in Goa on 20th December 2014.
The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Navy Prototype 1 (NP1), piloted by Commodore Jaideep Maolankar, the Chief Test Pilot of National Flight Test Centre, had a perfect flight with results matching the predicted ones.
LCA (Navy) is designed with stronger landing gears to absorb forces exerted by the ski jump ramp during take-off, to be airborne within 200 m as against 1000m required for normal runways. It’s special flight control law mode allows hands-free take-off relieving the pilot workload, as the aircraft leaps from the ramp and automatically puts the aircraft in an ascending trajectory.
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Press release, Image: Indian Navy