Light Combat Helicopter gets cheaper with crucial indigenous AFCS

HAL carried out the first flight of LCH with its own designed and developed Automatic Flight Control System for the first time in the country

The indigenous Light Combat Helicopter, which is already a success story that has been ordered by the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the army, logged an important breakthrough today by flying with an “automatic flight control system” (AFCS) designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL).

An AFCS is a powerful computer that keeps a helicopter flying stably, by sensing any deviation from level flight in microseconds, and sending flight controls the correctives needed to revert to stable flight.

So far, the LCH had been flying with an expensive, imported AFCS.

“The development of indigenous AFCS is a HAL-funded project