Bengaluru,19 September:Â Rajnath Singh(68) today became the first Union Defense Minister to fly a sortie in a twin seater version of the indigenously built Light Combat Aircraft(LCA) Tejas from the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited(HAL) public sector airport in the city.
Much before he tweeted: “All set for the day” and shared two snaps in typical air borne personnel uniform.
The Union Defense Minister also had a briefing by the Indian Air Force(IAF) pilots before he boarded the small aircraft.
Defense Ministry sources informed that the exercise is intended to boost the morale of officers who have been involved in the development of the home made light combat aircraft.
It will also boost the morale of IAF pilots who are flying these aircraft, added the official sources. It may be recalled here that the IAF has already inducted a batch of Tejas aircraft and the naval version of the LCA is in a developmental stage.
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh shared his experience of flying a sortie of twin seater LCA Tejas on twitter.
Tejas had also successfully carried out an “arrested landing”, a key performance in Goa on Friday last, demonstrating its ability to land on board an aircraft carrier, thus making it a major milestone of the naval variant of the fighter jet.
The IAF had initially placed an order for 40 Tejas aircraft with the HAL and last year the IAF issued the request for proposal(RFP) to the HAL for procurement of another batch of 83 Tejas aircrafts with an approximate cost of around Rs 50,000 crores.
