FWDA Kaal Bhairava Lite completes 100 flight hours

BENGALURU: Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace has completed 100 cumulative flight-test hours on its FWD Kaal Bhairava Lite unmanned aircraft, the Bengaluru company said as it positions the platform for long-range naval interest.

According to company statements around 22 September 2026, the Kaal Bhairava Lite configuration is designed for roughly 1,200 km range and 8 to 10 hours of endurance. Flight data cited by FWDA include climb rates of 7–8 metres per second, cruise speeds of 100–120 kmph, and take-off and landing within less than 120 metres.

Testing has included Bay of Bengal sorties in 25–30 knot gusts and a demonstration in Jammu and Kashmir operating conditions, the company said.

Navy RFI context and launch plans

FWDA is developing a pneumatic-assisted launch option so the aircraft can fly from ships and austere sites without a conventional runway. Founder and CEO Suhas Tejaskanda said 100 hours of testing gives the firm an extensively exercised indigenous architecture and that the 1,200 km-class design could fit Indian Navy requirements as well as export markets.

The Indian Navy's current request for information on long-range ship- and shore-launched loitering munitions seeks more than 1,000 km range and over nine hours of endurance. FWDA said it is assessing whether the Kaal Bhairava architecture can be adapted to that brief. No contract award is claimed in the 100-hour update.

Short-field performance matters for that pitch: sub-120-metre take-off and landing figures, if sustained outside company demos, would support shore and ship concepts that cannot spare a long runway.

Company background

Founded in 2022 by Suhas Tejaskanda, FWDA also develops the FWD-200B unmanned bomber and the wider Kaal Bhairava combat-aircraft family. The company said it has an export order from a South Asian country and has opened a manufacturing node in Portugal aimed at European and NATO-adjacent opportunities.

Hundred-hour milestones are engineering progress markers, not induction notices. Range and endurance figures remain design targets demonstrated in company flight tests rather than service-accepted specifications. Indian defence watchers will look next for whether the pneumatic launcher reaches a public demo and whether any RFI response is acknowledged by the Navy.

India's private defence-tech wave has produced several MALE and loitering claims this year; FWDA's update is notable because it publishes a round flight-hour total rather than only a single demo video. Still, 100 hours is an early reliability sample for a platform advertised at 1,200 km class.

Export interest and the Portugal node suggest FWDA is not waiting solely on a domestic navy order. Until a service selects the type, Kaal Bhairava Lite remains a company flight-test programme with publicly stated design goals.

Readers should stick to the primary documents named above for operational details, because secondary explainers often compress footnotes that change eligibility, fees or feature availability by country.

FWDA has not published a public flight-test report PDF with instrumentation appendices; the figures above are taken from the company's own summary of the 100-hour campaign.

Reporting basis: Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace company statements around 22 September 2026 on completion of 100 cumulative flight-test hours for FWD Kaal Bhairava Lite, including performance figures and naval RFI context quoted by the company.