HAL Carries Out First Flight of LCH with Indigenous Automatic Flight Control System

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) carried out the maiden flight of Light Combat Helicopter (Technology Demonstrator-2) with its own designed and developed automatic flight control system (AFCS). The helicopter was airborne for 20 minutes with the engagement of the system throughout and reported no glitch.

“The development of indigenous AFCS is a HAL funded project and will replace the high value imported system,” said HAL CMD T. Suvarna Raju. “The AFCS is a digital four axis flight control system capable of performing control and stability augmentation function and auto-pilot modes of helicopters. The indigenous development of the hardware, software and control law is a fully in-house effort of HAL R&D centres – RWR&DC and MCSRDC at Bengaluru, SLRDC at Hyderabad and Korwa division,” he added.




Wing Commander (retired) Unni K Pillai, Chief Test Pilot and Group Captain (retired) Rajesh Verma, test pilot were on the controls of the light combat helicopter. Representatives from certification agencies and senior officers from HAL were also present.

With the participation of Indian private industries, HAL has also indigenised the cockpit display system on LCH namely the integrated architecture display system (IADS) and development flight testing is under progress.

Pertinently, LCH was given initial operation clearance (IOC) on August 26 last year