Marshal Arjan Singh to be paid tribute with aerospace seminar on birth anniversary

A seminar on aerospace power of the future and the impact of technology will be held here Monday to pay tribute to war hero Marshal Arjan Singh of the Indian Air Force on his birth centenary. The event will be hosted by the IAF along with the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), an autonomous defence research and analysis body, at the Subroto Park.

The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa, is slated to address the inaugural session, the organisers said. The seminar on 'Aerospace power in the 2040s: Impact of Technology' will be held on April 15 when the Marshal of Indian Air Force would have turned 100, a senior official said.

Singh, who led the Indian Air Force during the 1965 India-Pakistan conflict, died in September 2017 at the age of 98. Singh, the only officer of the IAF to be promoted to five-star rank, equal to a Field Marshal in the Army, was admitted to the Army's Research and Referral hospital after he had suffered a cardiac arrest that would prove fatal.

"Technology has brought in the ability to deliver force from the air with unrivalled precision, at great range and in a matter of hours almost anywhere in the world, along with the ability to cause immense damage," the CAPS said in a statement. "The seminar will deliberate on the salience of aerospace technologies in the future projection of aerospace power for national security," it said.

An icon in the country's military history, Singh had led a fledgeling IAF in the 1965 Indo-Pak war when he was just a 44-year-old. Born on April 15, 1919, in Lyallpur in Punjab in undivided India, his father, grandfather and great grandfather had served in the cavalry.

(With inputs from agencies.)