Indian Air Force

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. You can help by converting these articles into an encyclopaedia-style entry, deleting portions of the kind nor mally not used in encyclopaedia entries. Please also fill in missing details; put categories, headings and sub-headings; and combine this with other articles on exactly the same subject. Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly on their online archival encyclopædia only after its formal launch. See examples and a tutorial.

Honorary ranks in the Air Force

Sachin to be made honorary IAF group captain

Times of India

New Delhi: The Indian Air Force is set to bestow the honorary rank of a Group Captain on cricketing great Sachin Tendulkar in recognition of his outstanding achievements as a sportsperson.

Honorary ranks in the Air Force are traditionally given to people who have made outstanding achievements at the national level, especially those linked to the aviation sector. Among those who have been given similar honorary ranks in Air Force are J R D Tata and Vijayapat Singhania. Both Tata and Singhania were awarded the honorary ranks of Air Commodore.

A senior Air Force officer said the IAF headquarters has decided to give Tendulkar the honorary rank of Group Captain. “We are awaiting the government’s approval,” he said. Once the proposal is approved, Tendulkar would be formally accepted as a member of the Air Force family, but he would have no official responsibilities with the IAF.

The senior IAF officer said several eminent persons of national standing have been given the honorary rank over the years. Inducting such leaders also helps in adding to the morale of the force, he said.

Indian military has a tradition of inducting outstanding individuals as honorary officers into its ranks. Recently, cricketer Kapil Dev and southern film star Mohanlal were inducted as honourary Lieutenant Colonels in the Territorial Army.

Tendulkar’s selection by the IAF is a slight departure from Air Force’s tradition. Usually, it has given the honorary rank to people who have had some role in the aviation sector. “But there is no such hard and fast rule,” the officer said. J R D Tata had obtained the first pilot licence issued in India and later started Air India. Singhania, chairman emeritus of the Raymond group, holds several world records in hot air balloon and microlight flying.

Medium multi role combat aircraft/Rafale

Medium multi role combat aircraft/Rafale,The Times of India

Permanent commission to three women officers

From the archives of The Times of India

IAF women officers win another job battle in HC TIMES NEWS NETWORK New Delhi: The Centre was directed by the Delhi HC on Tuesday to grant permanent commission to three women officers, who are on short service commission (SSC) with the Indian Air Force. Allowing a joint contempt plea by Wing Commander Rekha Singh and Squadron leaders Seema Nandan and Seema Dahiya against the government for non-compliance of the court’s earlier order, Justice Vipin Sanghi directed the defence ministry to grant permanent commission to them in six weeks on the basis of government’s policy in November, 2010. The court also directed the ministry to file a compliance report by May 24. The petitioners’ lawyer argued that one of the court’s benches had directed the government to frame a policy and grant permanent commission to women officers at par with their male colleagues. The lawyer submitted that the ministry had on November 19, 2010framed a policy but her clients were not given the benefit.