NEW DELHI: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar formally commissioned India’s first three women fighter pilots – Bhawana Kanth, Avani Chatuvedi and Mohana Singh – along with flight cadets of various branches of the Indian Air Force at the Air Force Academy in Dundigal on Saturday.
Flight cadets Avani Chaturvedi of Madhya Pradesh, Mohana Singh of Rajasthan and Bhawana Kanth of Bihar, all in their early-20s, bring in a new era for the Indian defence forces, which have for long opposed the induction of women in combat roles.
The three women have cleared the first stage of training and have about 150 hours of flying. After getting their wings as flying officers, they will train for six months on the Advanced Jet Fighter – the British-built Hawk – they will be assigned fighters and their squadrons.
“We are lucky to have been the first three women fighter pilots. It could have been anyone else,” the three jubilant women said while addressing the media after being commissioned.
After being commissioned, they will be posted to either the Bidar or Kalaikunda airbase to undertake “transitional” fighter training on the Hawks, which includes learning intensive combat manoeuvres and armament firing spread over a year to ensure the rookie pilots can handle old fighters like MiG-21s or relatively new multi-role ones like Sukhoi-30MKIs and Mirage-2000s.
Though the glass ceiling in the defence forces is now being gradually broken, the Army and Navy have no plans as of now to induct women into the infantry, armoured corps or artillery, nor allow them to serve on board warships.
Even in the IAF, which has 94 women pilots flying its helicopters and transport aircraft, their entry into the fighter combat stream as short-service commission (SSC) officers has been done on an “experimental basis” for just five years.
In February 2016, President Pranab Mukherjee had announced that all military combat roles will be opened to women in the future.