Smart Anti Airfield Weapon | 23 Jan 2021

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has conducted a successful trial of the indigenously developed Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon (SAAW) off the Odisha coast from the Hawk-I jet of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

This was the ninth successful test of the system conducted over the last five years.

Background: The system belongs to the glide bomb category and its development began around 2012-13, with crucial inputs from the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the first test was carried out in 2016.
Manufactured by: DRDO’s Research Centre Imarat (RCI) Hyderabad.
Features:
- The weapon is designed to strike ground targets, especially adversary airfield infrastructure or similar strategically important installations.
- This is a 125-kilogram class smart weapon, capable of engaging ground enemy airfield assets such as radars, bunkers, taxi tracks, and runways, up to a range of 100 kilometres.
- The high precision guided bomb is lightweight compared to weapon systems of the same class.
Other Related Development: The test of SAAW comes months after another weapon system designed to target enemy radar and communication assets, Rudram, was tested in October 2020.
- Rudram, an air-to-surface missile, has been developed to primarily to enhance the Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) capability of the IAF and can detect, track and neutralise the radar, communication assets and other radio frequency sources belonging to the adversary, which are generally their air defence systems.