Official First Flight Conducted Over Bangalore Monday

The first light attack helicopter to be produced domestically in India officially flew for the first time in Bangalore Monday. India's Hindustan Aeronautics Limited built the LCH, which is expected to be combat-ready in four to five years.

The news site 2point6billion.com reports that the Indian Air Force has already ordered 65 of the light attack helos, while the Indian Army has plans to acquire 114 of the aircraft. Indian Air Force Vice Chief Air Marshall P.K. Barbora said the LCH could eventually be exported to "friendly countries."

Defense Production Secretary R.K. Singh was among those to witness the first flight of the helicopter. He said a four-year projection for delivery to that country's armed forces would be a "reasonable time frame" for HAL to meet. He said it is important that a country be able to produce the weaponry used by its military forces, and recognizes that development of weapons systems and aircraft is "extremely lucrative."

In a news release, HAL said The LCH inherits many technical features of the Dhruv which includes the rotor system transmission, power plant, hydraulics, IADS, weapons system and avionics. The features that are unique to LCH are a narrower fuselage, tricycle landing gear, tandem cockpits, crashworthy & self sealing fuel tanks, airfoil shaped stub wings for weapons, armour protection, NBC protection and, low visibility features.

LCH will be fitted with a 20 mm Turret gun and can carry rockets or air-to-air / air-to-ground missiles on the weapon stations.

The helicopter would have day/night targeting systems for the crew including the helmet pointed sight and electro-optical pod consisting of CCD camera/FLIR/Laser range finder/laser designator. The LRF & LD facilitate measurement of range to the target & guidance to the laser guided missiles respectively. A digital video recorder would enable recording of the vital mission for debriefing purposes. The turret gun skewing is controlled by the helmet mounted sight of the gunner.

FMI: www.hal-india.com