28 'Phoenix' Gears up for induction ceremony
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Tps43
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Lil Mathew
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I exactly know what I am saying... You please back up your comments with some source...
Tps43
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Lil Mathew
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Total history is here....
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/opinion/bina-shah-high-can-pakistans-air-force-women-fly.html
How High Can Pakistan’s Air Force Women Fly?
Image
By Bina Shah
June 8, 2015
KARACHI, Pakistan — Flight Lt. Ayesha Farooq, Pakistan’s only combat-ready female air force pilot, has become both an international celebrity and a symbol of a new Pakistan, where women are breaking barriers and taking on roles traditionally closed to them. Yet Pakistan is also known as a country where women’s place in society yo-yos up and down. For example, in the 1990s it entrusted the leadership of the entire nation to Benazir Bhutto while still resisting girls’ education and advances in women’s rights.
Given this contradictory attitude, how far can Pakistan’s female air force officers expect to go?
That’s hard to answer. The air force has been more progressive than other branches of the military. At its inception, it modeled its service environment after the British Royal Air Force. In the late 1950s, while receiving an increasing amount of American equipment and mentorship, its chiefs turned more toward the ethos of the United States Air Force, and women began serving as air force doctors and nurses.
Then, in 1977, Group Capt. Shahida Perveen joined the force as a psychologist in a prominent role; she did psychological testing for the recruitment center, then helped establish an Institute of Air Safety to research how human error led to air accidents. She describes receiving “red carpet treatment” on joining the air force, and credits Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — the prime minister at the time, and Benazir Bhutto’s father — with opening doors for women who had ambitions beyond the medical units.
Still, women remained barred from other branches of the air force until 1995, when Ms. Bhutto, as prime minister, persuaded Air Chief Marshal Abbas Khattak to think about women joining branches of the air force beyond the medical branch, “now that women were being considered for everything — thanks to her influence,” says Riazuddin Shaikh, a retired air marshal who served under Air Chief Marshal Khattak.
Female cadets were then recruited into administrative and accounting departments. They became air traffic controllers, worked in law, logistics and education. They were trained for aeronautical engineering, avionics and information technology; they played huge roles in designing specialized avionics software and managing hardware at air force bases. Despite some reservations among male officers, Air Marshal Shaikh recalls no serious adverse reactions.
Nevertheless, a decision to allow women to become fighter pilots did not come until 2002, under Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir. By then, women were serving as pilots in the American military, and that precedent influenced the decision. But it took the voices of the women themselves to persuade Air Chief Marshal Mir. “Every time the women met him, they demanded that they be allowed to become pilots,” Air Marshal Shaikh recalled. “And because their inclusion had been progressive, it actually happened quite smoothly.”
The induction of female pilots into the Pakistani Air Force began in 2005, with one of the first, Aviation Cadet Saira Amin, winning the coveted Air Force Academy Sword of Honor for best in class during training in 2006. Today, 21 women serve as pilots, and while Lieutenant Farooq is the only one in a fighter squadron, five more are undergoing training for that at the air force academy in Risalpur. Others serve in transport, helicopter, electronic and drone squadrons. In total, there are now 339 women officers in the air force, 196 of them in medical positions — a traditional route for women that still has broad appeal.
When Benazir Bhutto was first elected prime minister in 1988, some Pakistanis questioned whether it was religiously correct for a woman to head a Muslim country. In the end, the questioning died down, at least in part on the basis of Quranic verses referring to the Queen of Sheba. So far, nobody prominent has raised similar objections on religious grounds against women taking combat roles. Captain Perveen recalls facing small indignities in a heavily male environment. “We were expected to smile,” she says today. “Was that really our role as lady officers?” Still, the force remains free of reports of sexual assaults like those that have plagued the United States Air Force.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani Air Force offers no exception to the expectation that Pakistani women must fulfill their age-old roles of wife, homemaker and mother. This helps explain why so few female cadets continue on a path to combat roles. It also explains why many women marry colleagues, since military men can better understand and support their career paths.
Eight years ago, Lieutenant Farooq’s extended family saw her choice to join the air force as an aberration from a woman’s normal path, and they tried to dissuade her, she related in a recent lecture. But, she said, she took their criticism as a challenge that drove her harder to succeed. Today, she said, she is happily married to a fellow air force officer, and her once-skeptical relatives now ask how their own daughters can join the air force.
In the force, Lieutenant Farooq was trained like the men. When fuel fumes made her nauseated her first time up in a Mushshak propeller plane, her instructor simply passed her the controls and ordered her to fly. Only later, on her first solo flight, she related, did she really feel in control in the air, with the “entire world beneath my feet.”
These days, the Pakistani Air Force eagerly trumpets her rise as a symbol of its modernity. But Air Marshal Shaikh is realistic. “It will take time before a woman can ever become the head of a branch, or even the head of the air force,” he says — the implication being that we may never live to see it. Still, growing numbers of Pakistani women view an air force career as an option, not just to serve their country but to gain the ultimate feeling of control over their lives.
Correction: June 8, 2015
An earlier version of this article misidentified the type of airplane in which Flight Lt. Ayesha Farooq trained to be a pilot. It was a Mushshak, not a Mishaal.
Many here think that PAF have many combat ready women pilots... Actually only one named "Ayesha Farooq" is there... Every others women fighter pilots are still under training...
Why you not think this information is not a contribution??? If I am wrong here any one can correct it... Do you have something to add in this with a credible source...
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DESERT FIGHTER
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Lol.. block I was discontinued and older jets upgraded to Block II status.
Raider 21
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Yes...but CCS is not a must to be a combat ready pilot. An operational status on a front line squadron is needed to be a combat ready pilot AND that is a requirement to get selected for CCS. End of story. Cheers !!!
HRK
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Excuse me, while I touch the sky: Meet war pilot Ayesha Farooq
The soft spoken war pilot said she is inspired by her mother, a housewife and a widow
KARACHI: Becoming the first and only female war pilot in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) can’t possibly come easy, but Ayesha Farooq makes it seem otherwise.
Being a woman and engaging in war, undergoing rigorous training, dealing with ‘brutal seniors’, and living in a country – or world – where females are commonly known as the second sex, Farooq has indeed defied the glass ceiling.
The slim framed and soft spoken war pilot said she was inspired by her mother, a housewife and a widow, who for Farooq, is “the ultimate symbol of strength.”
“My mother raised me to be strong, to a point that if one day, I was left alone, I would be able to take care of myself,” she said while addressing a crowd at the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, adding that her achievement comes as a consequence of her mother’s support.
She also spoke fondly of a pilot who taught and inspired her, saying, “He taught me to touch the skies.”
Of her life and experience in PAF, Farooq spoke about fun-filled experiences with her juniors and seniors, rigorous training and emotional goodbyes.
“Life at PAF wasn’t just about hardcore training and brutal seniors; it included fun memories with friends,” Farooq said.
In response to a question about the physical training one undergoes at the flight school, Farooq briefly explained: “You have to wake up for a one-mile run every morning at about 4:30am – so you’d run first, and then you’d wake up.”
She added that they had to carry an MG3, a machine gun, which weighs about four kg- for two hours. “You wouldn’t think 4kg is heavy,” she said. “But carry something of that weight for two hours, and you will realise it is.”
After that, Farooq said the students would have to undergo the theory part of the course, and then take part in compulsory games, Farooq chose swimming and horse riding, then it was prep time followed by “lights off.”
Offering advice to young women, the war pilot said that instead of looking up to role models become one yourself.
She encouraged women and girls to come out of their houses, telling them that men and women could, in fact, compete on the same level.
Regarding facing gender discrimination, Farooq said, “I didn’t face that at all, but of course I had to work harder to prove myself. Being inducted as a female fighter pilot was a great experience, but all eyes were on you at that point.”
For a woman who came across as soft-spoken and who is qualified to engage in combat, Farooq also displays her sense of humour.
When asked whether she would rather have been a transport pilot as opposed to a fighter pilot, she responded with a laugh, “definitely a fighter pilot.”
“I visited the cockpit of an airline once, and when I walked in they were sitting and eating donuts,” she said, to raucous laughter from the audience. “I asked them what they were doing eating donuts, and they casually replied “oh it’s, on autopilot.”
* Correction: In an earlier version of the story, it was not mentioned that the talk was held at the Aga Khan University.
Published in The Express Tribune,
@tps77
Farooq, from Punjab province's historic city of Bahawalpur, is one of 19 women who have become pilots in the Pakistan Air Force over the last decade - there are five other female fighter pilots, but they have yet to take the final tests to qualify for combat.
Pakistan's only combat-ready female fighter pilot
A growing number of women, like Ayesha Farooq, have joined Pakistan's defence forces in recent years as attitudes towards women change.
Reuters
Ayesha Farooq is one of a growing number of women who have joined Pakistan's defence forces in recent years as attitudes towards women change.
MUSHAF AIR BASE, PAKISTAN // With an olive green head scarf poking out from her helmet, Ayesha Farooq flashes a cheeky grin when asked if it is lonely being the only war-ready female fighter pilot in Pakistan.
Farooq, from Punjab province's historic city of Bahawalpur, is one of 19 women who have become pilots in the Pakistan Air Force over the last decade - there are five other female fighter pilots, but they have yet to take the final tests to qualify for combat.
"I don't feel any different. We do the same activities, the same precision bombing," the soft-spoken 26-year-old said of her male colleagues at Mushaf base in north Pakistan, where neatly piled warheads sit in sweltering 50C.
A growing number of women have joined Pakistan's defence forces in recent years as attitudes towards women change.
"Because of terrorism and our geographical location it's very important that we stay on our toes," said Farooq, referring to Taliban militancy and a sharp rise in sectarian violence.
Deteriorating security in neighbouring Afghanistan, where US-led troops are preparing to leave by the end of next year, and an uneasy relationship with arch rival India to the east add to the mix.
Farooq, whose slim frame offers a study in contrast with her burly male colleagues, was at loggerheads with her widowed and uneducated mother seven years ago when she said she wanted to join the air force.
"In our society most girls don't even think about doing such things as flying an aircraft," she said.
Family pressure against the traditionally male domain of the armed forces dissuaded other women from taking the next step to become combat ready, air force officials said. They fly slower aircraft instead, ferrying troops and equipment around the nuclear-armed country of 180 million.
Centuries-old rule in the tribal belt area along the border with Afghanistan, where rape, mutilation and the killing of women are ordered to mete out justice, underlines conservative Pakistan's failures in protecting women's rights.
But women are becoming more aware of those rights and signing up with the air force is about as empowering as it gets.
"More and more ladies are joining now," said Nasim Abbas, Wing Commander of Squadron 20, made up of 25 pilots, including Farooq, who fly Chinese-made F-7PG fighter jets.
"It's seen as less of a taboo. There's been a shift in the nation's, the society's, way of thinking," Wing Commander Abbas said on the base in Punjab's Sargodha district, home base to many jets in the 1965 and 1971 wars with India.
There are now about 4,000 women in Pakistan's armed forces, largely confined to desk jobs and medical work.
But over the last decade, women have became sky marshals, defending Pakistan's commercial liners against insurgent attacks, and a select few are serving in the elite anti-terrorist force. Like most female soldiers in the world, Pakistani women are still banned from ground combat.
Pakistan now has 316 women in the air force compared to around 100 five years ago, Wing Commander Abbas said.
"In Pakistan, it's very important to defend our front lines because of terrorism and it's very important for everyone to be part of it," said avionics engineer Anam Hassan, 24, as she set out for work on an F-16 fighter aircraft, her thick black hair tucked under a baseball cap.
"It just took a while for the air force to accept this."
https://tribune.com.pk/story/790817/excuse-me-while-i-touch-the-sky-meet-war-pilot-ayesha-farooq/
YOUR OWN POST
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...ly-female-fighter-pilot-is-ready-for-war.html
Now don't post your OUTDATED OFF-TOPIC IDIOCY
Lil Mathew
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I did post June 2015 "New York times" source also...
Become a combat ready fighter pilot is very difficult... Just do a training course & become combat ready is not an option at all... You have to achieve a certain standard to become a war ready fighter pilot...For example PAF inducted 4 woman fighter pilots in 2006, but none of them become combat readt...
Another example is IAF... First batch of woman tranee pilots of 25 are came out in 1994... But only in 2016, 3 are inducted in fighter squadrons... Still training... Only one flew a solo sortie in mig 21 some days before... Still a long way to become a combat readt fighter pilot...
If you have any source saying other than this... Plead post it???
HRK
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do u want me to give your posting value ...??? do your work by your own
for start look both screenshots non is Ayesha Farooq
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Lil Mathew
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HRK
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idiocy again .... are both pictures from 2011 ??
BTW even in that video both female were flying solo missions
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Dazzler
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No, but bringing women pilot in a threat titled "28 Phoenix gears up for induction ceremony" DOES!
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