DRDO conducts successful flight test of Smart Anti Airfield Weapon
25 Jan 2021
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Friday successfully conducted captive and release trial of indigenously developed Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon (SAAW).
The smart weapon was successfully test fired from an indigenous Hawk-Mk132 manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), off the Odisha coast, on 21 January 2021.
This was the 9th successful mission of SAAW conducted by DRDO till now. It was a text book launch, which met all mission objectives. The telemetry and tracking systems installed at Interim Test Range (ITR), Balasore captured all the mission events.
SAAW is indigenously designed and developed by DRDO’s Research Centre Imarat (RCI) Hyderabad. This is 125 kg class smart weapon, 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 a Jaguar aircraft.
Officials said the system belongs to the glide bomb category and its development began around 2012-13, with crucial inputs from the Indian Air Force and the first test was carried out in 2016. The weapon is designed to strike ground targets, especially adversary airfield infrastructure or similar strategically important installations.
The test of SAAW comes a month after another weapon system designed to target enemy radar and communication assets, Rudram, was tested in October last year. Rudram, India’s first indigenous anti-radiation missile developed for the Air Force (IAF), was successfully flight tested from a Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter in October, amidst a flurry of missile tests conducted by the DRDO.
Rudram, an air-to-surface missile, has been developed to primarily to enhance the Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) capability of the IAF and can detect, track and neutralise the radar, communication assets and other radio frequency sources belonging to the adversary, which are generally their air defence systems. Anti-radiation missiles are used in the initial part of an air conflict to strike at air defence assets of the enemy, ensuring higher survivability in subsequent strikes.
G Satheesh Reddy, secretary DDR&D and chairman DRDO, congratulated the teams involved in the successful trial