NEW DELHI – From the country’s oldest fighter jets to the newest, Flight lieutenant Shivangi Singh is preparing to graduate to fly the Rafale omni-role after becoming fully operational in the aging MiG-21 ‘Bison’.
Flt Lt Singh, who hails from Varanasi, will formally join the 17th Squadron ‘Golden Arrows’ of the 4.5 Generation Rafales at Ambala Air Base after completing their “conversion training”, which is required when a pilot of combat changes from one fighter to another.
But it should be very easy for Flt Lt Singh after flying the highly demanding and aging MiG-21s, which have practically the world’s highest landing and take-off speed at 340 km / h.
Flt Lt Singh, who studied at the Hindu University of Banaras, was among the second group of female fighter pilots to be commissioned in 2017. The IAF currently has 10 female fighter pilots, who have gone through arduous training to fly supersonic aircraft. It takes around 15 million rupees to train a single fighter pilot.
Flt Lt Singh was previously deployed to an outpost combat base in Rajasthan, where he has flown alongside Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, which was taken captive for a few days last year after his MiG-21 was shot down during an air skirmish with Pakistani fighters after the Balakot airstrikes.
Lieutenants Flt Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh were the first women to be commissioned as flying officers in the IAF combat stream after basic training in June 2016. They broke the glass ceiling of the combat exclusion policy long standing for women in the Indian Armed Forces.
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