| Details : | Group Captain Siruvuri Sridhar (20138) flying (Pilot) was commissioned as a pilot in the flying branch on 14 Jun 89. He has held the appointments of Hight Commander of a Chetak / Cheetah Helicopter Unit, Joint Director Personnel Planning-II at Air Headquarters and is presently commanding a Chetak helicopter unit at Air Force Station Jodhpur since 07 Apr 08. He is a graduate from National Defence Academy and a post graduate from Defence Services Staff College, Wellington. He is a qualified flying supervisor on Chetak/Cheetah helicopters and is presently holding "A Master Green" flying category. He has an accident/ incident free flying of 4,920 hours to his credit and took active parting Op Meghdoot by flying 975 hours of Air Maintenance and Casualty Evacuation Missions in the Siachen Glacier. For his professional competency and devotion to duty of very high order, he was thrice commended in the past by AOsC in-C, WAC & CAC and by CAS. During the last two years as the Commanding Officer of a Chetak unit, he marshaled his resources well to efficiently accomplish all the assigned peacetime tasks and maintained the unit in a combat ready state at all times by effective training, maintaining high serviceability state of helicopters and development of espirit-de-corps amongst the unit personnel. Despite Chetaks being an ageing fleet, the unit maintained an average serviceability of 75to 80% during the period and flew a total of 3,926 hours free of any accident/incident. The unit also achieved the distinction of completing 25,000 hours of accident/incident free flying in Nov 09. Under his command, the unit was assessed as Average Plus in Administration & Maintenance and High Average in Operations by DASI. AEB visited the unit twice during the period and all the eligible aircrew have been categorized commensurate with their experience. Despite the constraints of shortage of supervisors and helicopters, the additional task of Stage III helicopter conversion training of six aircrew was completed on schedule. The unit flew extensively in the Naxal affected areas of Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra towards election tasks and did a commendable job. During the period, the unit Search and Rescue helicopters were launched thrice at short notice and saved the precious lives of ejected fighter pilots. For exceptional devotion to duty, Hon'ble President is pleased to award 'Vayu Sena Medal' to Group Captain Siruvuri Sridhar. |
