Squadron Leader Bhawana Kanth has become the Indian Air Force's first woman Top Gun, the first woman pilot to clear the Fighter Combat Leader course at the Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment in Gwalior. The achievement was reported this week, ten years after women were first commissioned into the IAF's fighter stream.

The Fighter Combat Leader, or FCL, course is widely compared to the United States Navy's Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor programme, the original Top Gun school after which TACDE has picked up its own nickname within the force. TACDE runs the FCL over roughly 20 weeks and selects only about one in a hundred IAF pilots for a seat. Graduates go back to their squadrons as in-house authorities on weapons employment, tactics and air combat manoeuvring, and as the officers who train the rest of their unit in both.

What makes Sqn Ldr Bhawana Kanth the first woman Top Gun

Sqn Ldr Kanth's course exposed her and her batchmates to the changing character of aerial warfare. Instructors on the FCL are drawn from the fighter and helicopter streams and from the radar-controller branch, all handpicked for professional standing within the force.

The syllabus has moved with the times.

It now folds in unmanned systems, network-centric operations, long-range precision weapons and electronic warfare, alongside lessons drawn from recent conflicts elsewhere. TACDE develops the tactical procedures and standard operating procedures that fighter, transport, helicopter, fighter-controller and guided-weapons crews fly by, and it evaluates newly inducted aircraft, radars and weapon systems before they enter frontline service. Alongside the FCL, the establishment runs the Helicopter Combat Leader course and the Master Fighter Controller course.

A badge cleared by roughly one in a hundred

That selection rate is what gives the FCL its standing inside the IAF. A pilot who clears it is expected to plan and lead advanced air operations, not just fly them, and to carry that authority back into an operational squadron rather than into a staff posting.

Ten years from commissioning to Top Gun

Sqn Ldr Kanth was commissioned as a Flying Officer in June 2016, one of the IAF's first three women fighter pilots alongside Sqn Ldr Avani Chaturvedi and Flt Lt Mohana Singh. She hails from Darbhanga in Bihar and grew up in the Barauni Refinery Township in Begusarai, where her father worked as an electrical engineer with the Indian Oil Corporation. She trained as an engineer herself before joining the Air Force.

From the MiG-21 Bison to the Su-30 MKI

In May 2019, Sqn Ldr Kanth became the first Indian woman cleared to fly daytime fighter combat missions, on the MiG-21 Bison out of an airbase in Rajasthan. She later moved on to the Su-30 MKI, the IAF's frontline heavy fighter, before this year's FCL course.

The gap between those two milestones runs to seven years, and it tracks roughly with how long it takes a fighter pilot to build the flying hours and squadron experience TACDE expects of an FCL candidate.

A decade of firsts for IAF women fighter pilots

The IAF first opened its cockpits to women in 1994, when Flight Lieutenant Harita Kaur Deol flew solo, and the force later saw Air Marshal Padmavathy Bandopadhyay rise to become its first woman Air Marshal. For more than two decades after Deol's flight, though, women in the IAF were restricted to transport aircraft and helicopters. The combat stream did not open until 2016, when Sqn Ldr Kanth, Sqn Ldr Chaturvedi and Flt Lt Singh were commissioned together, and the scheme that let them in stayed experimental until 2022, when it was made permanent.

Sqn Ldr Kanth became the first woman fighter pilot to take part in the Republic Day Parade in 2021, as part of an IAF tableau built around scaled models of the Light Combat Aircraft, the Light Combat Helicopter, the Su-30 MKI and the Rohini radar. She later flew in the Republic Day Flypast in 2024.

Other women fighter pilots have added their own firsts since. Sqn Ldr Shivangi Singh became the force's first woman Rafale pilot, and Sqn Ldr Avani Chaturvedi was the first Indian woman fighter pilot to fly an aerial wargame abroad, with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. Gp Capt Shaliza Dhami went on to command a frontline combat unit in the Western sector in 2023, the first IAF woman to do so. Sqn Ldr Kanth's run to first woman Top Gun follows a string of such milestones across the services, from an all-women tri-service circumnavigation crew to the women boxers who anchored the Indian Army's medal count at this year's Commonwealth Games.

Where TACDE fits in the IAF's combat aviation setup

TACDE's graduates do not stay confined to the FCL. Master Fighter Controllers trained there work alongside pilots flying strike and air-defence missions on the IAF's Rafale fleet, and TACDE's own evaluations feed into how new aircraft and weapons are cleared for service.

Sqn Ldr Kanth's achievement comes about two months after Squadron Leader Saanya became the first woman to earn the Category-A Qualified Flying Instructor rating, the IAF's highest instructional qualification for military pilots. That rating, like the FCL, is awarded to pilots who return to train the rest of their squadron rather than simply fly alongside it. Both clearances sit in a widening set of roles inside the force that, until recently, had gone to no woman at all.