Flight Lieutenant Bhawana Kanth has become the country's first woman fighter be qualified to undertake to missions by day on a fighter aircraft in the IAF. This comes after she completed her day operational syllabus as a fighter pilot on the MiG-21 Bison supersonic aircraft.
Bhawana, from Darbhanga in Bihar, has become the first of the three in her batch of women fighter pilots to successfully complete her day operational syllabus on the MiG-21s at the Nal airbase in Bikaner. The other two women fighter pilots in the batch are Flight Lieutenants Avani Chaturvedi and Mohana Singh.
IAF's induction of women fighter:
The IAF has so far inducted six women into its fighter flying stream on an experimental basis for five years. It took around Rs.15 crore to train a single fighter pilot.
IAF had for long resisted inducting women in the combat stream because it felt it would disrupt tight fighter-flying schedules if they got married and had children.
IAF's training for the 3 fighters:
IAF posted the women fighter batch to MiG-21 squadrons rather than the easier-to-handle modern fighters like Sukhoi-30MKls or Mirage-2000s to ensure they undertake air defence missions over Indian territory in the event of war (MiG-21s are basically meant to intercept incoming enemy aircraft), and not go for strike missions deep into enemy territory.
The next woman fighter pilot to undertake missions by day is Flight Lieutenant Avani Chaturvedi. Flight Lieutenant Mohana Singh is also expected to reach this stage soon. The three women pilots were commissioned into the IAF’s fighter stream in June 2016.