Varanasi’s Shivangi to be the first women to fly Rafale aircraft

Flight Lieutenant Shivangi Singh hailing from Varanasi is all set to become the first woman in India to fly the Rafale aircraft.

She is currently undergoing “conversion training” to fly the Rafale jet and will soon be joining IAF’s No.17 squadron, “Golden Arrows” in Ambala.

Prior to the Rafale, Shivangi Singh used to fly the MiG-21 ‘Bison’. The conversion training is required when a combat pilot switches from one fighter to another.

An ex-student of Banaras Hindu University Shivangi Singh is one of the 10 women fighter pilots, who joined Indian Air Force in 2017. Prior to this she was serving at a fighter base in Ragasthan.

Ten women have been commissioned as fighter pilots after the experimental scheme for their induction into IAF’s combat stream was introduced in 2015. IAF is operating its Rafale fighter jets in the Ladakh theatre where the military is on its highest state of alert, amid heightened border tensions with China. IAF’s current fleet of five Rafale fighters is fully operational and ready to undertake any mission.

The headcount of women in military adds upto more than 4,000, but combat roles were off limits to them. However, IAF took the lead in inducting women into the fighter stream in the midst of internal resistance.

Still tanks and combat positions in the infantry are still no-women zone.

The Rafale was formally inducted into the Indian Air Force on September 10. The jets known for air-superiority and precision strikes are India’s first major acquisition of fighter planes in 23 years after the Sukoi jets from Russia.

The first batch of five Rafale jets arrived in India on July 29, nearly four years after India signed an inter-governmental agreement with France to procure 36 aircraft at a cost of Rs59,000 crore.

The second batch of four to five Rafale jets is likely to arrive in India by November.