BENGALURU: In the face of questions being raised on delays and safety of the light combat aircraft Tejas, the eve of Aero India 2025 saw Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh taking to the skies from Air Force Station Yelahanka in the two-seater multi-role fighter. And he wasn’t alone. The seat behind him was occupied by an old buddy and batchmate at the National Defence Academy, who is now the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS), General Upendra Dwivedi.
It was for the first time that two heads of respective armed forces flew together on a fighter for the Aero India 2025. Questions over LCA’s safety and delays shifted to whether it was safe for two chiefs of respective armed forces to fly on Tejas together, with no other pilot. But they did, just the two old buddies on a 45-minute joyride.
It so emerged that during the sortie, there was much leg-pulling and light-hearted banter between the two senior-most officers.
Recollecting the interaction the two had in the cockpit mid-air, Air Chief Singh said, “He was giving me instructions.” That the instructions came from the CoAS — who has probably never flown a fighter, and definitely not the LCA — to the Air Chief who is a veteran fighter pilot, was in itself humour in uniform. General Dwivedi termed the sortie as one of the most memorable moments of his life.
“Had he (Gen Dwivedi) been in the IAF, he would have been the air chief, not me,” he joked, adding: “It was a wonderful experience. He put a lot of trust in me,” Singh said.
That ‘trust’ although placed in the Air Chief, has also translated in it being reposed in the LCA Tejas after the sortie. In fact, Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh on Sunday said so — during the presser following the curtain-raiser by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh — that it was a moment of confidence-building and trust in the LCA.
The Air Chief took off in the LCA again on Monday, the inaugural of Aero India 2025, but this time, without his buddy.