HAL upgrades Hawk AJT in house, rolls out for expo

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has rolled out the first indigenously upgraded Hawk Mk132 advanced jet trainer (AJT), named Hawk-I, ahead of Aero India 2017 scheduled to commence here on February 14.

“This is the 100th Hawk aircraft produced at HAL and we are proud that it has Make in India mark. HAL had conceived a programme for indigenous upgradation of the Hawk Mk132 for achieving selfreliance and has successfully accomplished it,” said HAL chairman and managing director T. Suvarna Raju.

The upgrade of HAWK aircraft was taken up at HAL in order to be independent in matters such as integration of new subsystems or modifications, obsolescence management of avionics systems and to enhance the aircraft operational and training capabilities.

India already has the world's largest fleet of Hawk Mk132 advanced jet trainers (AJTs).

The IAF and navy have 123 Hawks on order, of which 90 are already in service, training their pilots.

While HAL builds the remaining 33 in Bengaluru under licence from BAE, the IAF is contracting for another 20 Hawks for its superlative aerobatics display team, which so far flew the Kiran Mark II.

The HAL-BAE agreement also envisages upgrading the Hawk Mk132 to the capability level of Hawk Mk128 trainers on which Royal Air Force pilots train.

In the Hawk upgradation programme, imported Mission Computer and Data Transfer Units have been substituted with HAL designed and developed systems.

This indigenous mission computer in the dual redundant configuration has additional capabilities such as Digital Map Generation (DMG) which provides improved situational awareness.

The Embedded Virtual Training System (EVTS) offers improved training capability over the existing system. The HAWK-i also provides secured voice communication and data link capability by integration of Softnet Radio and pilots could configure and select cockpit Human Machine Interface (HMI) for different aircraft platforms.