Gwalior was a princely state with aviation ambitions before it had an air base. In 1937, according to Wikipedia, J. R. D. Tata and Nevill Vincent flew a Waco YQC-6 biplane on the first airmail service between Gwalior and Bombay. The present airfield at Maharajpur was built by the Royal Air Force in 1942 as a training base for pilots during the Second World War.

After the war and independence the station passed to the Indian Air Force. Civil aviation began in 1958 with an Indian Airlines DC-3 from Delhi, and the airport still works as a civil enclave inside the air force station. Wikipedia’s No. 7 Squadron article places the squadron at Gwalior from November 1945, but its base chronology contains evident errors and is not relied on here.

India ordered 40 Mirage 2000s on 13 April 1982, according to Wikipedia. The first seven were delivered on 29 June 1985 to No. 7 Squadron, the Battle Axes, which had also been the IAF’s first jet squadron with the Vampire in 1949. No. 1 Squadron, the oldest unit in the service, has flown the Mirage from Gwalior since 1986.

The Mirage made Gwalior’s reputation in Kargil. In May 1999 No. 7 Squadron, under Wing Commander Sandeep Chabra, used laser-guided bombs for the first time in IAF operations against Pakistani positions and supply lines on Tiger Hill, Muntho Dhalo and Tololing; Wing Commander C. H. Kulkarni and Squadron Leader D. K. Patnaik were credited with destroying nine bunkers on Tiger Hill. The unit’s Mirages had earlier covered the Jaffna airdrop of June 1987, and six of them, flying from Trivandrum, made a show of force over the Maldives during Operation Cactus in November 1988. The Mirages have since been upgraded to the 2000I/TI standard.

In February 2019 twelve Mirage 2000s struck a Jaish-e-Mohammed site at Balakot in Pakistan, according to the Indian Express as summarised by Wikipedia. India said a large number of militants were killed; Pakistan said there were no casualties or damage, and independent analyses of satellite imagery by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Reuters with Planet Labs, European Space Imaging and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found no clear evidence of the claimed destruction. Wikipedia’s squadron article says the aircraft took off from Gwalior; its Ambala article says Ambala. The IAF has not said.

The Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment began at Adampur on 1 February 1971 as the Tactics and Combat Development and Training Squadron, set up by Wing Commander A. K. Mukherjee and Squadron Leader R. S. Chib, and took its present name in December 1972. It later moved to Gwalior, whose long runways and nearby restricted airspace suit live training; the date is not given in the sources used here. It received battle honours in 1995 for its part in the 1971 war and the Presidential Standard in 2009.

TACDE writes and tests the IAF’s tactics and trains its best fighter pilots, flying Su-30MKIs and Mirage 2000s. Gwalior also hosted Cope India from 16 to 27 February 2004, the first of the exercises between the IAF and US Air Force F-15s; later editions moved to Kalaikunda, Panagarh and Agra.

On 28 January 2023 a Su-30MKI and a Mirage 2000 collided in the air during a training mission. Wikipedia’s TACDE article records one fatality, Wing Commander Hanumanth Rao Sarathi, a Mirage 2000 instructor pilot of the establishment. The crash site, the fate of the other crew and the findings of any inquiry are not given in the sources used here, and are therefore not described. It was a reminder of what realistic dissimilar air combat training costs: the work TACDE exists to do is the most demanding flying the IAF does in peacetime.