Tejas, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) successfully fired Derby Air-to-Air Beyond Visual Range Missile to expand the firing envelope as well as to demonstrate safe operation of the aircraft during missile plume ingestion into the aircraft engine under worst case scenarios. The missile was launched from LCATejas piloted by Wg Cdr Siddharth Singh from the firing range off the Goa coast after exhaustive study of the missile separation characteristics and plume envelope. LCATejas has been designed & developed by DRDO's autonomous society - Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA).

Integration of Derby, a BVR class missile is one of the major objectives of Final Operational Clearance (FOC) of LCATejas.

The aircraft was tracked by two other Tejas aircraft in close formation to capture the firing event in the specially instrumented high speed cameras for detailed analysis and comparison with the simulation model for validation. The entire planning, practice sorties and final firing was carried out by ADA and it's National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) officials Cmde JA Maolankar and GpCapt A Kabadwal, IAF, DG(AQA), HAL &  INS HANSA.

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