DRDO’s ”Ex-Air India Airbus A-319 Anusandhan” starts trials

Source : IDRW

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India’s premier defense research agency, Defence Research, and Development Organisation (DRDO) owned Ex-Air India, Airbus A319 (VT-SCO) ”Anusandhan ” that has been transferred to the Centre for Airborne Systems (CABS) facility in Bengaluru recently started familiarization sorties with new IAF crew manned by CABS officials along with rudimentary sensors and instruments.

Anusandhan is the first Flying Test Bed that will be used for the Design and Developmental testing of the sensor package suite for the Netra 2.0 AEW&C, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance (ISTAR), and Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft (MMMA) systems programs in the country. Airbus A321 based Netra 2.0 AEW&C will be getting an upgraded Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) sensor package suite. Six A-321 that have been transferred from Air India to IAF will be heading to the Airbus facility in Europe by end of this year for structural modification before it can commence trials.

idrw.org had confirmed that Netra 2.0 AEW&C configuration has gone through a visible change from earlier configuration as now the beyond-line-of-sight datalinks, satellite communication systems Radome have been moved behind and now it is close to the tail section and it seems plans to have multimode airborne Maritime surveillance Radar to act as an effective force-multiplier solution for operational missions in the maritime theater seems to have been dropped.

New Radome incorporated in the top forward section in the revised configuration seems to suggest that plans to replace weather radar located in the nose cone of the aircraft with a derivate of the Uttam AESA might have been dropped and instead, now it will be on the top Radome that seems to suggest that Radar antenna size now will be much bigger than originally planned if true will have more forward tracking and search range.

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