BENGALURU: In a major leg up for made-in-India fighter jet 'Tejas'. Air Marshal RKS Bhadauria, Air Officer Commanding in Chief (AOC-in-C), Southern Command, demonstrated its prowess during a solo flight in Bengaluru on Tuesday, a harbinger of operationalization of the fleet. The IAF has placed an order for 123 'Tejas' combat jets with the first squadron scheduled to move to its location at Sulur near Coimbatore shortly.
Air Marshal Bhadauria has been pushing the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) for early operationalization of the fleet from the time he took over the reins of the Southern Air Command of IAF in March 2017.
Mr. T. Suvarna Raju, CMD-HAL thanked the AOC-in-C for reposing faith in this advanced indigenous combat aircraft. HAL is set to ramp up production of these fighter aircraft from eight to 16 a year with the establishment of an additional production line in Bengaluru. The design activities for improved version, Tejas MkIA, are already underway.
In the IAF hierarchy, Air Marshal Bhadauria stands second after Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa and former Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha to fly this combat aircraft. No 45 Squadron, "The Flying Daggers", which was the first squadron to be equipped with Tejas LCA in July
last year, played host to the Air Marshal who has been associated with 'Tejas' programme for the last 15 years. An accomplished fighter pilot, who is also an experimental Test Pilot, he was part of the National Flight Test
Centre, which conducts flight testing of the indigenously developed combat aircraft. The Air Marshal demonstrated professionalism and went through the rigours of ground training, simulator flying and familiarization sortie in the trainer version, before flyng solo in the fighter aircraft.
