‘My last press conference’: When the Indian Air Force Chief began saying goodbye

• Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh answered all questions as he has done throughout his tenure, directly, without too much ceremony, and often with the bluntness of a fighter pilot.

By Parwinder Sandhu

New Delhi. For most of the afternoon, it was business as usual. Questions came one after another, about wars that no longer begin with a declaration, about machines that fly without pilots, about satellites, artificial intelligence, China and Pakistan, about fighters and future battlefields.

Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh answered them as he has done throughout his tenure, directly, without too much ceremony, and often with the bluntness of a fighter pilot.

But somewhere in the middle of it all came a sentence that changed the character of the room.

“This also happens to be my last press conference because I am going to superannuate this month.” Just like that, an annual press conference became something else. A goodbye, though not quite said as one.

On October 31, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh will hang up his uniform after nearly four decades in the Indian Air Force, a journey that began with a young officer entering the fighter stream in 1984 and took him through the cockpit, test flying, operational commands and eventually to the highest office in the IAF.

There have been many Air Chiefs. But AP Singh has been unusually visible, not merely because of the chair he occupied, but because of the way he occupied it. He has been among the most vocal Air Chiefs in recent years, speaking with unusual candour about what the IAF needs, where its vulnerabilities lie and how warfare is changing beneath its feet.

Yet, strangely enough, it may not be those carefully recorded statements that people will remember most. It may be the photographs and videos. The Air Chief dancing with air warriors and their families at a social gathering. The uniform sometimes replaced by ordinary clothes. The four-star officer laughing and standing among younger personnel as though the distance between the Chief and the airman had briefly disappeared.

For a man who had spent a lifetime learning to fly machines designed for war, retirement might have been expected to bring some grand reflection on achievement.

Instead, when asked what he wished he had done differently, Singh offered something far more ordinary. “Whenever you start something, you are learning on the job.” There was no grand lesson in the answer. Just experience.

“I was the chief for the first time. So, every new day, you are learning new things.”

Then came the confession that perhaps every professional, at the end of a long career, understands. “I wish I had got up one hour earlier, and forced myself to work one hour more.” It was an unexpectedly tender admission from a man whose job has demanded decisions measured in minutes and sometimes seconds.

And then came the question that seemed to take him back to the beginning, not the Chief looking back at his career, but the young Flight Lieutenant looking forward. What would he tell that young officer today?

The answer came without hesitation. “Just be yourself, and do your job with commitment. That’s it.”

Perhaps the sentence says as much about the man as it does about the soldier. “We all have different capacity, capability, we have different things that we can do better. But we all have to be committed. And that is what is required.”

Then, almost as an instruction to an entire generation of air warriors: “100% commitment to your task.” There was something fitting about that being his message.

On his final press conference, ahead of the 94th Air Force Day, he thanked serving personnel, veterans and citizens for their support. Every individual in the IAF, he said, had a role to play. And then, almost as though reassuring a country that has listened to him speak about the vulnerabilities and challenges facing the force, he said: “I can assure the nation that we are always ready.” It was not the language of farewell. It was the language of duty. Perhaps that is how a soldier says goodbye.

On October 31, the uniform will be folded away. The aircraft will continue to fly. Young officers will walk into briefing rooms, strap themselves into cockpits, learn from mistakes and dream of changing things, just as Singh once did. Some of them will perhaps remember the man who occupied the highest chair and still managed to look, at times, like one of them. A Chief who spoke his mind. A pilot who remained a pilot. A four-star officer who could still be seen simply as a soldier.

(By arrangement with The Statesman)