Two IAF Jaguar Crashes in 3 Months: Churu Tragedy Follows Heroic Sacrifice of Flt Lt Siddharth Yadav

As of July 9, 2025, in New Delhi In just three months, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has seen two terrible crashes involving its Jaguar fighter jets. This raises serious concerns about how reliable the fleet's older planes are.

A Jaguar trainer jet with two seats crashed near Bhanoda village in Rajasthan's Churu district on July 9, 2025. The plane was on a normal training mission from the Suratgarh air base. The plane went down in an open agricultural field around 1:25 p.m., sending shockwaves through the neighborhood.

It was reported that both pilots on board were dead. Teams from the IAF and emergency services went to the scene to find bodies and look into what happened. No people were hurt in the crash, but the IAF has started a Court of Inquiry to look into what happened.

Witnesses said they heard a loud noise and then saw thick smoke and broken objects flying around the area. This was the third Jaguar crash in the past few months and the second fatal one. The tragedy has raised more concerns about the decades-old planes that are still being used.

The Sacrifice of Flight in April 2025, Officer Siddharth Yadav

Three months before, in April 2025, the same thing happened to another Jaguar jet while it was on a training mission at night near Jamnagar, Gujarat. 

The plane was being flown by Flight Lieutenant Siddharth Yadav, 28, from Rewari, Haryana, with a co-pilot on board. When the plane's systems started to fail, Siddharth made sure his co-pilot could safely jump out of the plane and then steered the malfunctioning jet away from residential areas, giving up his own life in the process.

His family had a lot of military roots, and they were both sad and proud. He was commissioned in 2020 and promoted in 2022. Ten days before the crash, Siddharth got proposed to his fiancée Saniya. The wedding was set to happen in November 2025.

His funeral was held with full military honours, and thousands of people came to honour his bravery and mourn his death. He died while helping other people, which made his father, a former IAF officer, very sad and very proud.

Review of the IAF Jaguar Fleet

Both crashes show that the Indian Air Force's SEPECAT Jaguar fleet, which has been in use since the 1970s, is getting old. Even though the planes have gotten safer over the years, their safety record has been called into question more and more recently.

Because three pilots have died in two accidents in the last three months, security analysts are pushing the IAF and the Ministry of Security to speed up plans to retire or overhaul the fleet to protect pilots and make sure it is ready for missions.