Flight Lieutenant Shivangi Singh, the first and only woman Rafale fighter pilot, on Thursday shared her experience of flying the fighter aircraft in the Ladakh sector area amid the standoff with China.
“I have flown in that area and the aircraft has performed as expected and we have easily carried out all the missions it deserved,” said Flight Lieutenant Singh.
Singh shot to fame after becoming the first woman pilot of the Indian Air Force to fly the Rafale fighter jet in the multinational exercise Orion in France. Later, he grabbed headlines after leading the tableau of the Indian Air Force in the Republic Day parade last year (2022). She was only the second woman fighter jet pilot to be a part of the IAF tableau. Last year, Flight Lieutenant Bhawana Kanth became the first woman fighter jet pilot to be a part of the tableau of the Indian Air Force.
Who is Shivangi Singh?
Singh, who hails from Varanasi, had joined the Indian Air Force in 2017 and was in the second batch of women fighter pilots of the Indian Air Force. Before flying Rafale, she was flying MiG-21 Bison aircraft. Singh is part of the Golden Arrows Squadron of the IAF based in Ambala, Punjab. The IAF’s tableau was based on the theme ‘Indian Air Force Transforming for the Future’. Scaled-down models of Rafale fighter jets, indigenously developed Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) and 3D surveillance radar Aslesha MK-1 were part of the float.
The first batch of Rafale fighter jets arrived on July 29, 2020, nearly four years after India signed an inter-governmental agreement with France to buy 36 aircraft at a cost of Rs 59,000 crore. So far, 32 Rafale jets have been delivered to the IAF and four are expected by April this year.