NEW DELHI: Squadron Leader Bhawana Kanth has become the first woman to graduate from the Indian Air Force's toughest fighter qualification, clearing the Fighter Combat Leader (FCL) course at the Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment (TACDE) in Gwalior.
The FCL is among the hardest badges a fighter pilot can earn. Only a small fraction of IAF aircrew, reportedly about one in a hundred, are picked for the roughly five-month programme, which drills selected pilots in advanced air combat tactics and turns them into the specialists who set the template for how frontline squadrons fight. Graduates return to their units as the in-house authorities on weapons employment and combat manoeuvring.
Reaching that level closes a loop Sqn Ldr Kanth helped open a decade ago. In June 2016 she, Avani Chaturvedi and Mohana Singh were commissioned as the IAF's first women fighter pilots, after the government opened the combat stream to women on an experimental basis.
In May 2019 she became the first Indian woman cleared to fly fighter combat missions by day, then on the MiG-21 Bison, before converting to the Su-30 MKI. She has since featured in a Republic Day parade tableau and was conferred the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2020. Sqn Ldr Kanth, who hails from Darbhanga in Bihar and trained as an engineer before joining the force, is one of a cohort that keeps posting firsts. Squadron Leader Mohana Singh, commissioned alongside her, went on to become the first woman to fly the indigenous Tejas in a frontline squadron.
Her course reflected how quickly aerial warfare is shifting. Alongside classic dogfighting skills, students worked through the rising weight of unmanned systems and long-range precision weapons, the kind of capabilities that are shaping contemporary conflicts including the West Asia War and Operation Sindoor.
TACDE sits at the sharp end of the IAF's fighting doctrine. Beyond running the FCL, it develops the tactical procedures and standard operating manuals used across the force, and it puts newly inducted aircraft, radars and weapons through rigorous evaluation before they enter wider service. It also conducts the Helicopter Combat Leader and Master Fighter Controller courses, weaving together air-to-air and air-to-ground operations, electronic warfare and surface-to-air coordination.
Sqn Ldr Kanth's achievement slots into a longer line of women who have pushed back the IAF's frontiers, and it comes about two months after another first. In May, Squadron Leader Saanya became the first woman to earn the service's highest instructional grade, the Category-A Qualified Flying Instructor rating, reserved for those cleared to train and assess other instructors.
The IAF first opened its cockpits to women in 1994, when Flight Lieutenant Harita Kaur Deol became the first to fly solo, and it would later count Padmavathy Bandopadhyay as its first woman Air Marshal.
For two decades women flew only transport aircraft and helicopters, until the combat stream was thrown open in 2016 and Kanth, Chaturvedi and Singh walked through it. The firsts have kept coming since.
In 2018 Avani Chaturvedi became the first Indian woman to fly a fighter solo, on a MiG-21. Mohana Singh went on to join a frontline Tejas squadron. And in 2020 Squadron Leader Shivangi Singh became the first woman to fly the Rafale, with the Golden Arrows at Ambala.
Recognition has followed the flying, too. Squadron Leader Minty Agarwal was the first woman awarded the Yudh Seva Medal, for her work as a fighter controller during the aerial clashes that followed the 2019 Balakot strike. Women officers have also moved into the public face of operations, Wing Commander Vyomika Singh among those who fronted the government's briefings during last year's confrontation with Pakistan.
