Mahiyar Rohinton Patel, Pune
Air Marshall Amar Preet Singh has been selected for the rank of Air Chief Marshal which makes him the next Chief of Air Staff. He will be taking over from his predecessor Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhary from September 30th.
Air Marshall AP Singh was commissioned as a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force in December 1984. Since then, he has held several top ranking posts; with appointments across instructional, foreign and command postings within the Air Force. He was serving most recently as the Vice Chief of Air Staff.
Air Marshall AP Singh is a qualified flying instructor with over 5000 hours in the cockpit of different fixed wing and rotary wing aircrafts. He was a project director on the MiG-29 upgrade team in Moscow. Another appointment as project director was at the National Flight Test Centre where he led the flight testing for India’s first indigenous fighter plane; the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas. He also held a frontier command post when he commanded a fighter squadron on a frontline airbase. Before becoming the Vice Chief of Air Staff, he was the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Central Air Command.
The Air Marshall was in the headlines recently where he said that though indigenisation is very important, it must not come at the cost of national security. These comments are in the wake of the delayed deal with the United States over the MQ9 Predator drones. The drone deal has languished for years now and has followed a pattern of consistent delays in different defense equipment. Even local defense manufacturing of the LCA Tejas has been fraught with delays with HAL being unable to ramp up production.
The chief has his task cutout for him with several challenges the Air Force is facing such as the clinical shortage of fighter aircraft. The mandated number of squadrons for the air force to fight a two-front war with Pakistan and China is 42. The current strength of deployable fighter squadrons is only 33.
There are multiple other organisational issues pending such as the theatrerisation of the armed forces and the Agniveer policy, the former of which has been particularly contentious for the Indian Air Force as the organisation feared being subsumed under the numerically Army control and command structure. Even the Agniveer scheme is slated to be modified with the potential increase in the percentage of recruits permanently taken into the force.