DRDO successfully test-fires anti-airfield weapon from Hawk-i aircraft

In yet another milestone, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully conducted captive and release trial of indigenously developed Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon (SAAW). This took place from Hawk-I of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) off the Odisha coast on January 21, 2021.

The smart weapon was successfully test-fired from Indian Hawk-Mk132 of HAL. This was the 9th successful mission of SAAW conducted by DRDO till now. It was a textbook launch, which met all the mission objectives. The telemetry and tracking systems installed at the 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 a 125 Kg class smart weapon, capable of engaging ground enemies airfield assets such as radars, bunkers, taxi tracks, and runways etc. up to a range of 100 km. The high precision-guided bomb is lightweight as compared to the weapon system of the same class. The weapon was earlier successfully test-fired from Jaguar aircraft.

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