On Day 1 of Aero India in Bengaluru, the stall displaying the scale model of Hindustan Lead in Fighter Trainer (HLFT)-42, a project conceived by defence PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), was one of the crowd pullers.
The HLFT-42 is claimed by the HAL as the ‘Next Gen Supersonic Trainer’ that will play a critical role in modern combat aircraft training equipped with state-of-the-art avionics like Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA), Electronic Warfare (EW) Suite, Infrared Search and Track (IRST) with Fly By Wire control (FBW) system. The FBW is a system that replaces the conventional manual flight controls of an aircraft with an electronic interface. Whereas the IRST is a method to track objects that give off infrared radiation.
