Air Marshal Amar Preet Singh to take over as next IAF chief

NEW DELHI: Air Marshal Amar Preet Singh will take over as the next chief of the IAF from Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari , who retires on Sept 30, the govt announced on Saturday.

The government has gone by the seniority principle in appointing Air Marshal Singh, a fighter pilot who was commissioned in Dec 1984, as the next IAF chief .

Air Marshal Singh held important command and staff appointments before he was appointed the vice-chief in Feb last year. Before that he was the air officer commanding-in-chief of the Central Air Command at Prayagraj.

He is a qualified flying instructor and an experimental test pilot, with over 5,000 hours of flying on a variety of aircraft and helicopters. During his career, he has commanded an operational fighter squadron and a frontline air base. As a test pilot, he led the MiG-29 fighter upgrade project management team at Moscow and was also project director (flight test) of the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft.