TEJAS fighter jet on Wednesday 23rd August 2023 has successfully test fired the ASTRA indigenous Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missile. The maiden flight was piloted by Gp. Capt D Mandal and the missile release was successfully carried out from the aircraft at an altitude of about 2000ft off the Coast of Goa.

The test launch of monitored by Gp. Capt B Balaji, Test Direct and Scientists of ADA, HAL, DRDO along with officials from CEMILAC and DG AQA. The aircraft was also monitored by a Chase TEJAS twin seater aircraft piloted by Wg Cds Siddarth Singh KMJ (Retd), Flight Test Pilot and Wg Cdr KP Kiran Kumar, Flight Test Engineer. During hot debrief, pilot commented that all the objectives of the tests were met and it was a perfect text book launch

ASTRA is the state-of-the-art BVR air-to-air missile designed and developed by DRDL along with RCI (DRDO) to engage and destroy highly manoeuvring supersonic aerial targets.

ADA