India’s Tejas Combat Aircraft Refueled in Air by IL78 Tanker

India’s Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas, has successfully completed mid-air refueling engagement today by transferring 1900 Kgs fuel from an Indian Air Force (IAF) IL78 mid-air refueling tanker.

The refueling was carried out at an altitude of 20000 ft.  The aircraft speed was 270 knots and all the internal tanks and drop tanks were refueled. A few days ago, the successful dry docking of aerial refueling probe with mother tanker was carried out on September 4 and 6, 2018.

The Tejas aircraft was the limited series production (LSP)-8. The Tejas is currently in limited series manufacture and is in a production contract to manufacture over 100 aircraft for the IAF.

The Air-to-Air (AAR) system for refueling military class of aircraft was developed by its manufacturer, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, says Mr R Madhavan, CMD, HAL.

Piloted by Wg Cdr Siddarth Singh of NFTC, this significant milestone was achieved today at 0930 hrs with designers from HAL and ADA closely monitoring the system parameters from the ground station at Gwalior.

The performance of aircraft systems (mainly Fuel & Flight controls systems) during the trial were in-line with the design requirements and was closely matching with the results of extensive ground tests of air-to-air refueling system.