By Smriti Jain, ECONOMICTIMES.COM | 18 Sep, 2015, 01.25PM IST
HAL's LCH: Made in India combat helicopter eyes weapon firing trials - The Economic Times
NEW DELHI: Giving a leg up to the focus on indigenous defence production, India's Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) is now eyeing weapon-based trials with its fourth technology demonstrator, TD-4. The weapon firing trials are planned for the middle of 2016.
The LCH is a twin-engine helicopter of 5.8-ton class designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to meet the requirements of Indian defence forces. LCH was proposed to meet IAF's requirement of a dedicated light helicopter for combat operations.
HAL claims that the LCH is designed to carry out dedicated combat roles such as Air Defence, anti-tank, scout and support combat search/rescue missions. It incorporates a number of stealth features such as reduced visual, aural, radar and infra-red signatures and crashworthy landing gear, armour protection for better survivability. The helicopter is powered by two Shakti engines. There are plans to produce LCH in large numbers to meet the operational requirements.
"TD-4 has been planned to facilitate accelerated weapon flight trials. TD-4 is getting ready and would be available for weapon trials soon," HAL's CMD, T Suvarna Raju told Economictimes.com. According to him, the TD-4 has been built as the weight optimised prototype of the LCH, which would be "most suited" for weapon trials.
In pic: LCH during its hot & high altitude trials at Leh
Further, weapon trials will continue in line with the specific requirement of customers. HAL is pursuing with customers for production orders and induction timelines will dependent on these orders. Suvarana Raju says that enquiries have been received from other countries during this year's Aero-India.
So, are there any specific improvements that HAL is eyeing for the LCH?
"LCH Design and Development program has progressed with incremental improvements in each prototype from TD-1 through TD-4. Based on the feedback from flight trials, various improvements have been made to fine tune handling qualities, speed and vibration...further improvements would be planned in coordination with the users," Suvarna Raju said.
In pic: LCH during its hot weather flight trials in Jodhpur
When will the LCH get Initial Operational Clearance?
The combat helicopter has recently completed a series of all weather (hot and high altitude, sea level, cold weather and hot weather) trials. HAL hopes that the helicopter will get basic clearance by the end of this month. "With the hot and high altitude trials successfully completed at Leh in August 2015, the performance and handling characteristics of the basic helicopter have been established, and the clearance for the basic configuration of LCH is expected by September 2015," said HAL's CMD.
In pic: LCH TD-3 during its maiden trials
Extensive trials have been carried out on three prototypes at Bengaluru, sea level at Chennai in November 2013, cold weather at Leh during January-February 2015, hot weather at Jodhpur in July 2015 and hot and high altitude trials at a few days ago at Leh. LCH is the first attack helicopter to land in Forward Bases at Siachen.
LCH-TD-1 was first flown on March 29, 2010 and LCH-TD-2 was flown on June 28, 2011. The TD-3 made its successful maiden flight in 2014.
In pic: An earlier prototype of the LCH
HAL says that the performance and handling qualities of the helicopter have been established for basic configuration (with EO Pod, rocket launchers, turret gun and air-to-air missile launchers). In all HAL is expected to produce/manufacture 179 LCH for Indian Defence forces.
But its better we induct in mass numbers aggressively once fight yest is been cleared . As of now we will habe to wait for weapon trails to get inducted which means flying safely is been cleared as next step is to integrate with weapons . 
