Tejas SP-1 had its maiden flight

NEW DELHI: State-owned HAL and DRDO today carried out the maiden sortie of the first LCA Tejas aircraft produced for the Indian Air Force by them in Bengaluru. 

The aircraft named 'Series Production 1' would now undergo a series of trials under the Acceptance Performance Tests before it is handed over to the IAF,DRDO officials said here. 

IAF plans to have four such aircraft in its Bangalore-based Tejas squadron before it starts evaluating them and approves it for final operational clearance, they said. 

The IAF has ordered 40 LCA Mk 1 aircraft and is likely to induct five more squadrons of an advanced version of the aircraft being developed by the DRDO andHAL. 

The aircraft had received initial operational clearance last year and has to get the FOC in next few months before it starts operational flying. 

The aircraft was being manufactured by HAL in partnership with the DRDO over the past several years, and the programme has been long-delayed and has seen several cost and time over-runs. 

HAL has so far built seven LCA aircraft for trial purposes, which have been used to determine the final configuration of the plane to be given to the IAF

More Updates:

Military sources say Tejas SP-1 flew for 25 minutes and touched a maximum speed of 0.6 Mach.Maiden outing without telemetry support seen as a morale booster for HAL, ADA, NFTC teams.

Tejas likely to fire #DebryBVRAAM and #PythonAAM missiles soon(approx 3 months). 

AoA (Angle of Attack) of Tejas is getting closer to 26 degrees..

2 test variants of Tejas currently on a '#bombingmission' in Jaisalmer. New bombs (250 kg & 450 kg) being tested.

Anantha Krishnan in Twitter.

Few more updates from Saurav Jha

LCA update #1: Cobham IFR and quartz radome expected to be delivered by November. 

LCA update #2: Gun firing demonstrated from ground to user for all necessary parameters. Airborne testing in Jamnagar. 

LCA update #3: Angle of Attack up to 26 degrees demonstrated. More testing is underway. 

LCA update #4: Derby carriage trials Mid-October. Test firing by end-October. Dr TamilMani says piece of cake.

LCA update#5: IFR is not an issue once the assembly is actually delivered. Some more air to ground weapons are also being integrated.

LCA update #6: SP-1 is a completely debugged version of LSP-8 and is performing very well according to Dr Tamil Mani.