Aero India 2023: HAL removes Lord Hanuman sticker from tail of HLFT-42 aircraft model displayed at airshow

Bengaluru, Feb 14: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on Tuesday removed the picture of Lord Hanuman from the tail of the HLFT-42 aircraft model displayed at Aero India 2023 airshow in Bengaluru, news agency ANI reported.

This comes a day after HAL unveiled a scale model of the Hindustan Lead in Fighter trainer (HLFT-42), which also showcased a picture of Lord Hanuman with the caption- 'The Strom is Coming' displayed on the vertical fin of the trainer.

However, HAL did not officially spell out reasons.

Union Minister for Mine, Coal, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi on Monday tweeted about the Lord Hanuman picture and expressed his happiness over it.

Joshi had shared the pictures of HLFT-42, a super jet model on micro-blogging platform Twitter and wrote,''The picture of Bajrangbali (Lord Hanuman) is specially highlighted on the jet.''

About the HLFT-42

HLFT-42 is the 'Next Gen Supersonic Trainer' that will play a "critical role" in modern combat aircraft training with state-of-the-art avionics like Active Electronically Scanned Array, Electronic Warfare Suite, Infrared Search and Track with Fly by Wire control system, the HAL told news agecy PTI. The photo of lord Hanuman on the vertical fin of the trainer symbolises strength, speed, and agility.

The aircraft will have an infrared search and track (IRST) system, wing tip pylons with at least four hard points on each wing, a frontal fuselage that appears to be from the Tejas Mk1, and small strakes attached to the air intakes that give it a similar appearance to the air intakes on the HF-24.

The HLFT-42 aircraft is the successor of HAL Marut, the first Indigenous aircraft. Marut is the other name for Wind, or 'Pawan' as it is called in Hindi.