A Light Combat Aircraft IAF’s Tejas met with an accident in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan during an operational training mission. The pilot was ejected safely. This is the first crash of the indigenous aircraft since its first flight 23 years ago. The Tejas was introduced to the Indian Air Force in 2016.
Tejas crashed at Jawahar colony in Jaisalmer which is around 100 km away from the venue where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is addressing the Bharat Shakti program today.
At the heart of this accident lies the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, an indigenously built supersonic aircraft used by the Indian military. The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) was founded in 1984 as a result of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program, which was started by the Indian government, to supervise the development of these aircrafts. The LCA Tejas was designed and developed mostly by India’s own aerospace corporation, HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited). The initiative was formally renamed “Tejas” in 2003 by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose name means “radiance” in Sanskrit. It is the second supersonic fighter jet that HAL has designed, the HAL HF-24 Marut was the first.
