Group Captain Dhami commissioned as a helicopter pilot in 2003 and has over 2,800 hours of flight time. Dhami has experience flying the Chetak and Cheetah helicopters.
The Indian Air Force named Group Captain Shaliza Dhami to lead a frontline combat unit in the Western area on Tuesday.
Group Captain Dhami will be the IAF’s first female commander to command a missile squadron in the Western region, which would face Pakistan. She presently assigned to a frontline command headquarters’ operations branch.
Group Captain Dhami commissioned as a helicopter pilot in 2003 and has over 2,800 hours of flight time. Shaliza has experience flying the Chetak and Cheetah helicopters.
She was a certified flying instructor and flight commander of a Chetak unit at Hindon air station, both of which were firsts for an Indian Air Force woman officer.
Shaliza has already received two commendations from the Air Commander Commanding-in-Chief.
She did multiple search-and-rescue flights as well as flood relief missions as a helicopter pilot.
Shaliza Dhami :
Wing Commander Shaliza Dhami is an officer in the Indian Air Force. She is the first woman officer in the IAF to receive a permanent commission and the first woman to become a Flight Commander.
Her parents were both government employees, therefore she made the decision to join the Indian Air Force fairly early on, especially after becoming an NCC cadet.
Vineet Joshi, her spouse, is also an Indian Air Force helicopter pilot.
The Indian Air Force began inducting female fighter pilots in 2016; the first batch had three female fighter pilots. Nowadays, they fly the MiG-21, Su-30MKI, and Rafale.
The Army promoted 108 women officers to the rank of Colonel, making them eligible for leadership positions.
Engineers, Signals, Army Air Defence, Intelligence Corps, Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance Corps. And Electronics and Mechanical Engineers are among the units in which women commanders have taken charge. The Navy has recently begun to accept female officers aboard frontline ships, which were previously off-limits to female officers.
Several of them have sent to the Army’s critical northern and eastern commands.
There are 10,493 female officers in the armed forces, with the majority working in the medical services.
The Indian Army, the largest of the three services, has the most women officers. With 1,705, followed by 1,640 in the Indian Air Force and 559 in the Indian Navy. This figures submitted to Parliament by the government last year.