India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has successfully test flown High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT), drone on 22 September.

The indigenously designed drone is called Abhyas. It is the work of DRDO’s Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE).

The test, which involved two of ABHYAS demonstrator vehicles, was conducted from the Interim Test Range, Balasore in Odisha.

The target drone met the user’s performance requirements, including a top speed of Mach 0.5, the endurance of 30 minutes, operating altitude of 5 km, and a 2G turn capability.

The Indian armed forces earlier fielded the reusable Lakshya and Lakshya-2 high‐speed aerial targets which have designed to present a real threat for training fighter pilots in air‐to‐air combat and simulate a variety of missile threats.

Abhyas is not designed to be recovered following a training mission. It is believed that up to 225 of these new target drones will be acquired.