The Government on Tuesday announced that Air Marshal V R Chaudhari, presently Vice Chief of IAF, will succeed RKS Bhadauria, who retires on September 30.
Chaudhari was commissioned into the Fighter stream of Indian Air Force on in December, 1982 and has held various Command, Staff and Instructional Appointments at various levels including the present one as Vice Chief of Air Staff.
He has flying experience of more than 3,800 hours of flying on a wide variety of fighter and trainer aircraft, including missions flown during Operation Meghdoot and Operation Safed Sagar. Chaudhari is an alumnus of National Defence Academy(NDA) and Defence Services Staff College(DSC), Wellington.
As an Air Vice Marshal, he has been Deputy Commandant, Air Force Academy, Assistant Chief of Air Staff Operations (Air Defence) and Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Personnel Officers). He has also held important appointments of Deputy Chief of the Air Staff at Air Headquarters overseeing capital procurements and Senior Air Staff Officer at Eastern Air Command. He was the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Air Command before taking over the present appointment as Vice Chief in July this year.
This is beginning of the change of current line of Service Chiefs with the Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh set to retire end November and Army Chief Manoj Naravane in service till April 2022. Incidentally, all the current chiefs are from the same batch of the NDA.