In June 2016, a 23-year-old engineering graduate from Bihar stood on a stage in Hyderabad alongside two other women, becoming part of an experiment the Indian Air Force had approved only months earlier: letting women fly fighter jets. A decade on, Squadron Leader Bhawana Kanth has gone further than any woman in the country's history. 

On 6 August 2026, she became the first woman to complete the Fighter Combat Leader (FCL) course, the IAF's most demanding tactical qualification, often compared to the United States Navy's "Top Gun" programme.

Kanth cleared the 20-week course at the Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment (TACDE) in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, the IAF's highest centre for operational combat training. Only about 1% of the force's fighter pilots are selected for the programme each intake, and a significant share do not make it through. 

Those who graduate return to their squadrons as fighter combat leaders, tasked with shaping air combat tactics, planning weapons deployment and training the pilots who fly frontline missions after them.

Kanth's path to TACDE began the way it began for every woman in the IAF's fighter stream, at the Air Force Academy in Hyderabad, where she, Avani Chaturvedi and Mohana Singh were commissioned as the first three women fighter pilots in June 2016.

Kanth grew up in Begusarai, where her father worked as an engineer, and studied medical electronics at BMS........

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