S R K Nair


Air Marshal Sreedhara Panicker Radha Krishnan Nair, PVSM, AVSM, VM, Mention in Dispatches was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Training Command of the Indian Air Force from 1 September 2015 to 31 July 2018. He succeeded Air Marshal Ramesh Rai.

Early life and education

Nair was born on 7 July 1958 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He is an alumnus of Loyola School, Thiruvananthapuram and National Defence Academy, Pune.

Career

Nair was commissioned into the transport stream of the Indian Air Force in June 1980. He has clocked over 7200 hours of flying and has experience on many different types of aircraft's including Otter, Avro, An-32, Dornier and IL-76. He held several key operational and administrative appointments at various stages of his service including Chief Operations Officer of a Transport Base; Commanding Officer of a strategic Air lift Squadron; Director Operations at Air Headquarters; Air Officer Commanding of AFS Chandigarh; Assistant Chief of the Air Staff ; Assistant Chief of the Air Staff and Senior Air Staff Officer of Training Command. He has also been extensively involved in many military operations including Operation Pawan, Operation Cactus, Operations Parakram and Operation Safed Sagar. As the Flight Commander, he was directly involved in initiating night operations to Leh and Thoise on the IL-76 aircraft. He has led multiple airborne exercises with foreign countries including in South Africa in 1999, and . He captained a flight to the , making it the He played a pivotal role in , the highest air strip in the world, for An-32 and C-130 aircraft. He was involved in numerous disaster relief operations during the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, Super cyclone in Orissa, 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Mumbai Floods, Cyclone Katrina, China Earthquake and was the Air Force co-ordinator for Operation Rahat. He is a qualified Flying Instructor, has been an Air Force Examiner and is the Commodore Commandant of 44 Squadron.

Awards and medals

During 38 years of his career, Nair has been awarded several medals: AOC-in-C Commendation, Chief of the Air Staff Commendation, GOC-in-C Commendation, Mention-in-Despatch, the Vayu Sena Medal, the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and the Param Vishisht Seva Medal.

Personal life

He is married to Geethanjali Nair and their daughter Karthika Nair is married to Manu Balachandran, Special Correspondent, Forbes India.