Flight Lieutenant Shivangi Singh, the primary and only female Rafale fighter pilot on Thursday shared her expertise of flying the fighter plane over the Ladakh sector space amid the standoff with China.
“I have flown in that area and the aircraft performed as expected and we have carried out all the missions that were entitled to us with utmost ease,” Flight Lieutenant Singh said.
Singh shot fame after turning into Indian Air Force’s first girl pilot to fly the Rafale fighter plane within the multinational Exercise Orion in France. Later, she hogged the limelight after main the Indian Air Force tableau on the Republic Day parade within the final yr (2022). She was only the second girl fighter jet pilot to be a part of the IAF tableau. Last yr, Flight Lieutenant Bhawna Kanth turned the primary female fighter jet pilot to be a part of the IAF tableau.
Who is Shivangi Singh?
Singh, who’s from Varanasi, joined the IAF in 2017 and was commissioned within the IAF’s second batch of ladies fighter pilots. She had been flying MiG-21 Bison plane earlier than flying the Rafale. Singh is a part of the IAF’s Golden Arrows squadron based mostly out of Ambala in Punjab. The IAF tableau was based mostly on the theme — ‘Indian Air Force remodeling for the longer term’. Scaled-down fashions of Rafale fighter jet, indigenously developed gentle fight helicopter (LCH) and 3D surveillance radar Aslesha MK-1 had been a part of the float.
The first batch of Rafale fighter jets arrived on July 29, 2020, practically 4 years after India signed an inter-governmental settlement with France to obtain 36 plane at a price of Rs 59,000 crore. So far, 32 Rafale jets have been delivered to the IAF and 4 are anticipated by April this yr.
