n a major boost for Indian armed forces, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Tuesday (September 22) conducted the successful flight test of ABHYAS–High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT). The flight test was done from the Interim Test Range, Balasore in Odisha.

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh called the the successful flight test of ABHYAS a milestone and said that ABHYAS can be used as a target for evaluation of various Missile systems.

He tweeted, “The DRDO achieved a milestone today with the successful flight test of ABHYAS – High-Speed Expandable Aerial Target from ITR Balasore. This can be used as a target for evaluation of various Missile systems. Congratulations to DRDO & other stakeholders for this achievement.”

ABHYAS is is designed and developed by Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), DRDO and it is launched using twin underslung booster.

Design

DRDO has designed Abhyas on an in-line small gas turbine engine and it the device uses indigenously developed micro-electro-mechanical systems-based system for navigation and guidance.DRDO has adopted its Lakshya tow body to design the fuselage for the Abhyas. The fuselage consists of five sections, namely the nose cone, equipment bay, fuel tank bay, air intake bay and tail cone.