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In a historic step for the Indian Air Force (IAF), central government has approved the creation of a new branch, called the Weapon Systems (WS) branch.

The surprise announcement was made by the Chief of Air Staff of the IAF, Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari during his customary speech at this year’s Air Force Day celebrations.

Also beginning from next recruitment year, the IAF chief said the air force will start inducting ‘women agniveers’.

For the first time IAF parade on Air Force Day was not held in the Capital New Delhi. On Saturday the 8th of October 2022, IAF’s annual parade was held in Chandigarh with an impressive flypast.

The creation of WS branch would entail unification of all weapon system operators under one entity dedicated to the operational employment of all ground-based and specialist airborne weapon systems.

The branch would encompass operators in four specialised streams of Surface-to-Surface missiles, Surface-to-Air missiles, Remotely Piloted Aircraft and Weapon System Operators in twin/multi-crew aircraft.

The branch will contribute immensely by enhancing the war fighting capability of the Indian Air Force.

No single Service can win a war on its own and tomorrow’s conflicts cannot be fought with yesterday’s mind-set, ACM-VR Chaudhari said.

“There is a need to plan for integrated and joint application of combat power. The key to success in multidomain operations is to have flexible, robust and redundant Command and Control Structures which will allow a joint force to dominate across domains,” the IAF Chief said.

“No single service can win a war on its own, work is in progress to enhance jointness amongst the three services,” he added.

was not opposing any process of integration or having theatre commands.

The IAF Chief said that the traditional domains of land, sea and air have expanded to include space and cyber.

“We are increasingly seeing the convergence of all these domains into one continuum in the form of Hybrid Warfare. The use of non-kinetic and non-lethal warfare to supplement kinetic means has changed the way wars will be prosecuted,” he said.

Terming the induction of Air Warriors into the IAF through the Agnipath scheme “challenge”, the officer said that the IAF would be inducting 3000 Agniveer Vayu for their initial training in December this year and the numbers will go up in the years to come.

“We have changed our operational training methodology to ensure each Agniveer is equipped with the right skills and knowledge to start their career in the Air Force,” the IAF Chief said.