| Details : | Group Captain Rajesh Prabhakar Phadtare (18022) Aeronautical Engineer (Electronics) was commissioned in the IAF as an engineer in the AE (L)branch on 19 Aug 85. He has a rich experience on both Mirage-2000 and MiG-21 fleet and has held important appointments of Engineering Officer and Senior Technical Officer in both the Mirage and Mig-21 squadrons. He has also held important staff appointments at Air HQ and Command HQ. He is a Qualified Aeronautical Instructor and has served as an instructor in the Mig-21 Tettra School and commanded the Mirage 2000 Tettra School. He has been associated with the Mirage fleet for the past eleven years and has contributed immensely in the field of maintenance and training. As a Senior Engineering Officer in the Mirage Squadron, due to his keen initiative he had undertaken many measures to improve upon the maintenance standards. He took keen initiative in recovery of the long unserviceable Ground Support Equipment, activation of the centralised power supply in the hangar for aircraft and developed the software for maintaining the snag history of the Mirage fleet, which is extremely useful for snag rectifications. During his tenure at the Mirage Tettra School the officer put in concerted efforts for up-gradation of the three major simulators, which were unserviceable since long, through indigenous vendors. Today all the three simulators are fully serviceable and are proving to be of immense training value. As Director Mirage at Air HQ he was instrumental in signing of the Door-to-Door repair contracts with the French OEMs. This has contributed significantly towards improvement of the Mirage 2000 fleet serviceability. The officer is presently posted as Chief Engineering Officer at Air Force Station, Gwalior. His focus on the operational preparedness has ensured good serviceability of Mirage and the MiG fleets at the base. He has also taken keen initiative in improvement of the standards of the support services, rectification and reliability improvement of the long unserviceable test benches. He was instrumental in successfully integrating the GIMI(Mirage Computerized Maintenance System) with AFNET, which has now enabled the Squadrons to document all maintenance activities from any detachment location. He also initiated the project for development of the Solid State Memory based Video recorder for the Laser Designation Pod (LDP). The prototype recorder was flight tested successfully and is now under production for fitment on all the LDPs. For distinguished service of high order, Hon 'ble President is pleased to award 'Vishisht Seva Medal' to Group Captain Rajesh Prabhakar Phadtare. |
