Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari takes charge as new IAF chief

Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari has taken over the charge of the new chief of air staff on Thursday. He succeeded Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria following his retirement. In a brief address to the IAF personnel, he also spoke on acquisition of new technology, promotion of indigenisation and innovation, strengthening of cyber security and need for adopting new training methods to deal with future security challenges. The Chief of Air Staff also urged the IAF personnel to "always uphold the ethos and credo of the 'Air Warrior' and strive to be an asset" to force in any role tasked for.

Air Chief Marshal Chaudhari was serving as Vice Chief of the Air Staff before assuming the new role. He was serving as commander-in-chief of the IAF's Western Air Command (WAC) that looks after the security of India air space in the sensitive Ladakh sector as well as various other parts of north India. An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Air Chief Marshal Chaudhari was commissioned into the fighter stream of the IAF on December 29, 1982. In a distinguished career spanning nearly 38 years, the officer has flown a wide variety of fighter and trainer aircraft in the inventory of IAF.He has a flying experience of more than 3,800 hours, including operational flying on MiG-21, MiG-23 MF, MiG 29 and Su-30 MKI fighter jets.