India’s first woman Rafale pilot part of IAF’s tableau
Flight Lieutenant Shivangi Singh joined the IAF’s fighter stream in 2017 and flew the MiG-21 Bison aircraft before being posted to a Rafale squadron based in Ambala.
NEW DELHI: Flight Lieutenant Shivangi Singh, the country’s first Rafale pilot, was a part of the Indian Air Force (IAF) tableau that featured in the Republic Day parade on Wednesday. She joined the IAF’s fighter stream in 2017 and flew the MiG-21 Bison aircraft before being posted to a Rafale squadron based in Ambala.
She hails from Varanasi.
Only a handful of women --- less than 20 --- have been commissioned as fighter pilots so far after the government launched a scheme for their induction into the IAF’s combat stream in 2015, a watershed in the air force’s history.
Shivangi was in her teens when her grandfather drove her to an air force museum for the first time, the fateful trip marking the beginning of an unending romance with aviation for the young and impressionable girl.
Apart from Rafales, IAF’s women pilots are operating the MiG-21 Bison, Sukhoi-30 and MiG-29 fighters.
There are more than 9,000 women currently serving the army, navy and air force, with the services giving them more opportunities to boost career progression. The headcount of women in the military has increased almost threefold over the last seven years.
While women have now been allowed to serve on warships; tanks and combat positions in the infantry are still no-go zones. They were allowed to join the armed forces outside the medical stream for the first time in 1992.
In December, the Indian Navy said it was going ahead with a plan to give women officers more opportunities to serve aboard warships alongside their male counterparts, with several women already assigned to frontline ships operating in the broad expanse of the Indian Ocean Region.
Also, the National Defence Academy is set to induct its first batch of women cadets in June 2022. The Supreme Court opened the doors of the academy to women in a landmark order in October 2021.
