Squadron Leader Bhawana Kanth has become the first woman Fighter Combat Leader in the Indian Air Force, qualifying from the Fighter Combat Leader course at the Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment at Gwalior. The force announced the achievement on its official channels, describing it as a first for a woman officer at its premier air combat school.

Sqn Ldr Kanth is a serving fighter pilot from the 2016 batch that first opened the combat cockpit to women. The qualification places her among the pilots the force trusts to plan and lead complex air operations. The force released photographs of her being felicitated by a senior officer at the establishment.

She flew the MiG-21 Bison early in her career and has served on the front line since.


What a Fighter Combat Leader does

The Fighter Combat Leader course is among the harder professional qualifications a fighter pilot can hold. Reporting on Sqn Ldr Kanth's graduation put the programme at about 20 weeks, open to roughly one per cent of the force's pilots. Those who pass are expected to lead formations through demanding air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, and to carry that tactical judgement back to their squadrons.

It is a leadership qualification as much as a flying one.

TACDE, the IAF's air combat school

The Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment is the apex school for air combat in the service. It develops the tactics, doctrines and standard operating procedures the fighter fleet flies by, the kind tested in multinational air combat exercises. It is often described as the Indian Air Force's equivalent of the Top Gun school.

TACDE was raised on 1 February 1971 at Adampur as the Tactics and Combat Development and Training Squadron, and redesignated the following year. During the 1971 war its crews flew night counter-air strikes against Pakistani airfields, work that earned it Battle Honours from the President. It later moved to Gwalior, where it sits alongside the base's fighter squadrons, and was conferred the President's Standard in 2009.

The making of the first woman Fighter Combat Leader

Sqn Ldr Kanth was commissioned into the Indian Air Force in June 2016 as one of the first three women to enter the fighter stream, which the government had opened on an experimental basis. The other two were Sqn Ldr Avani Chaturvedi and Sqn Ldr Mohana Singh.

She joined a fighter squadron in November 2017 and flew her first solo sortie on the MiG-21 Bison in March 2018. In 2019 she was cleared to fly day combat missions on a fighter, another first for a woman pilot at the time. Years of squadron flying and progressively harder qualifications followed before she qualified as the first woman Fighter Combat Leader. She has flown with No. 3 Squadron.

Earlier milestones

She was awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2020. In January 2021, then a Flight Lieutenant, she became the first woman fighter pilot to feature in the Indian Air Force's Republic Day tableau.

A widening set of roles for women in the IAF

The qualification lands among a run of recent firsts for women across the services, from an all-women tri-service circumnavigation to the Coast Guard's move to gender-neutral officer induction. The experimental scheme that inducted Sqn Ldr Kanth and her batch was made permanent by the Ministry of Defence in 2022.

Women pilots have moved into new streams and instructor roles since. Sqn Ldr Shivangi Singh, the first woman to fly the Rafale, was recently awarded a Qualified Flying Instructor badge, and another officer, Sqn Ldr Saanya, earned the Category A Qualified Flying Instructor qualification earlier in the year. Sqn Ldr Kanth's graduation adds the Fighter Combat Leader course to that list.