| Details : | Wing Commander (Now Group Captain) Harsh Vardhan Thakur (22105) Flying (Pilot) As the Commanding Officer of the unit since 29 Mar 10, he has led his recently resurrected unit with great passion and gusto. These have clearly been reflected in the numerous achievements of the unit and the high level of morale and motivation of all personnel of the squadron. The Sqn, under his command has aggressively transformed itself from a regular Jaguar fighter Sqn to take on the additional role of type training for the Jaguar fleet. The flying task of the Sqn was increased from 170 hrs per month to 300 hrs per month from Apr 10 onwards without any additional resources. The Sqn has sustained this flying over the past seven months and has flown an unprecedented 3400 hrs of accident free flying over the last one year. All this was only possible due to the untiring effort of the Officer and his highly motivated team. Through this effort, the Sqn has graduated seven U/T pilots to Day Ops qualification and an additional seven pilots are on the threshold of graduation, thus adding 14 more Ops pilots to the Jaguar fleet, which is the equivalent of one additional Sqn's aircrew resource. Meanwhile, all Ops pilots in the Sqn have also graduated to achieve all possible higher qualifications such as 4 ac leader, Trainer Captain, Supervisor, Night Strike Qualified, LDP Qualified, AAR Qualified etc. The Officer has also employed his skills as a test pilot to innovate and provided many value additions to the Jaguar DARIN II suite. One of these praiseworthy innovations was the incorporation of Full-Color, Moving Satellite Imagery into the Multi-Function Display, to aid in navigation, target acquisition, and target designation, at no additional cost to the IAF. For his exceptional devotion to duty, Hon'ble President is pleased to award 'Vayu Sena Medal (Devotion to Duty)' to Wing Commander Harsh Vardhan Thakur |
