DRDO Conducts Successful Flight Test Of Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon From HAL's Hawk-i Aircraft

In yet another milestone, DRDO successfully conducted captive and release trial of indigenously developed Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon (SAAW) from Hawk-i aircraft of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) off the Odisha coast on Thursday (21 January), the Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Friday (22 January).

The test was was the ninth successful mission of SAAW conducted by DRDO till now.

According to the ministry, the launch met all mission objectives. All the mission events were captured by the telemetry and tracking systems installed at Interim Test Range (ITR), Balasore.

SAAW is indigenously designed and developed by DRDO’s Research Centre Imarat (RCI) Hyderabad. The 125 Kg class smart weapon is capable of engaging ground enemy airfield assets such as radars, bunkers, taxi tracks, and runways etc up to a range of 100 km.

The high precision guided bomb is light-weight as compared to weapon system of the same class. The weapon was earlier successfully test fired from Jaguar aircraft.

Dr G Satheesh Reddy, Secretary DDR&D and Chairman DRDO congratulated the teams involved in the successful trial.