Tejas LCA aircraft, perhaps participating in the Bharat Shakti exercise at Pokharan, where tri-service firepower was exhibited to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, crashed roughly a hundred kilometres away.
The jet crashed into a dormitory near Jaisalmer’s Kalla and Jawahar neighbourhoods. There were no deaths, and the pilot ejected safely moments before the incident happened.
Ammunition that was carried
While it is unclear what type of ammunition the aircraft was carrying when it crashed, the Tejas typically carries a variety of armaments. It carries missiles, both close combat and beyond visual range missiles, as well as laser-guided bombs. It can also carry “dumb bombs,” which are those without laser guidance and are dropped with the hope that they would hit their target. The Tejas can also carry customised racks and 25-kg practice bombs.
Typically, the arms are set to fire when the pilot is ready to drop them.
Because the aircraft was involved in the firepower display, it is likely that it was carrying weapons when it took off for what is characterised as a “operational training sortie.”
Clarity needed
It is also unclear at what point of the operational sortie the disaster happened, whether shortly after takeoff or during the return. The majority of the flight path from the Jaisalmer air force base to the shooting range at Pokhran is over desert territory with scant population.
This is the first time a Tejas has crashed after over 30,000 missions. The Prime Minister himself had an incident-free sortie in Bangalore a month after the aircraft, constructed in India, was inducted into the air force in October of last year.
A court of inquiry has been ordered, which is especially noteworthy given that things might have gone wrong far closer to the VIP enclosure, from which the firepower demonstrations were viewed. The flight data recorder and the pilot’s debriefing will provide information as to what transpired.
