New Delhi: Saturday was a special day for the Indian Navy as it brought a much-awaited feat to the services.  The naval version of indigenously designed and produced light combat aircraft (N) MK1 successfully made an arrest landing on the INS Vikramaditya, India's biggest warship. "The developmental LCA (N) MK1 achieved an important milestone today with the successful Arrested Landing on board the #IndianNavy aircraft carrier " tweeted Indian Navy's twitter handle at 11.11 AM Saturday.

This feat of arrest landing onboard has put India in the class of elite nations. Only the US, France, Russia and China have in-service aircraft that are capable of making arrested landings on an aircraft carrier. The arrested landing involves the use of high-tensile-strength wires restraining the aircraft as its lands.

The landing was conducted by Commodore Jaideep Maolankar. "After completing extensive trials on the Shore Based Test Facility, DRDO, ADA developed LCA Navy did an arrested landing on INS Vikramaditya successfully today 11 Jan 2020 at 10:02 hours. Commodore Jaideep Maolankar did the maiden landing," DRDO tweeted.

With this feat, the indigenously developed niche technologies specific to deck based fighter operations have been proven, which will now pave the way to develop and manufacture the Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter for the Indian navy, the navy tweeted.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh extended greetings to the naval services for achieving the remarkable feat that only a few countries in the world have been able to get.

Secretary Defence and Defence Production Dr Ajay Kumar also congratulated the team of HAL, ADA and Indian Navy. Hw tweeted

Last year in September the Indian Navy had successfully executed a textbook arrested landing at the INS Hansa after several years of flight testing and four campaigns of dedicated testing at the shore-based test facility in Goa.