BENGALURU: Captain Shivnath Dahiya, on Thursday safely executed the first contact of the arrestor hook system of a naval prototype of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas, and put India in the select club of US, Europe, Russia and China having the capability of Deck Landing of fighter aircraft.

“The LCA Naval Prototype 2 (NP2), piloted by Dahiya safely executed the first contact of the arrestor hook system with Arresting wire at moderate taxi-in speeds on location at the Shore Based Test Facility, INS Hansa, Goa,” HAL said in statement, released months after reports of the apprehensions over the aircraft first appeared.

The first successful Taxi-in engagement was monitored closely by the Landing Signal Officer Cmde J A Maolankar and Test director Gp Capt A Kabadwal (Retd).

HAL chairman and managing director (CMD) T Suvarna Raju said this was only the first of a series of engagement planned at proving the arrestor hook capability. The HAL’s design wing, Aircraft Research and Design Centre (ARDC) has designed and developed the Arrestor Hook System (AHS) for Ship Deck operations of LCA Naval version.

“The LCA Naval Prototype 2 (NP2), has been integrated with this AHS. Having verified in-air operation of Arrestor Hook System in Bengaluru on July 23, 2018, the aircraft has been operating at INS Hansa Goa, since July 28, 2018,” the statement read.

HAL added that the Carrier Compatibility trials (CCT) of Naval Aircraft are slated to be carried out at shore-based test facilities, built at Indian Naval Base Goa. The CCT involves completion of extensive shore-based trials before embarking on actual deck. This trial is the stepping stone towards completion of CCT trials of LCA Navy .

