It was officially established on 8 October 1932 as an auxiliary air force of the British Empire which honoured India's aviation service during World War II with the prefix Royal.

[21] The IAF provided extensive assistance to relief operations during natural calamities such as the Gujarat cyclone in 1998, the tsunami in 2004, and North India floods in 2013.

The Indian pilots were led by British RAF Commanding officer Flight Lieutenant (later Air Vice Marshal) Cecil Bouchier.

Another volunteer was Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan a Muslim pacifist and Indian nationalist who joined the WAAF, in November 1940, to fight against Nazism.

Noor Khan served bravely as a secret agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France, but was eventually betrayed and captured.

New aircraft added to the fleet included the US-built Vultee Vengeance, Douglas Dakota, the British Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Westland Lysander.

[44] During the course of the conflict, the PAF enjoyed technological superiority over the IAF and had achieved substantial strategic and tactical advantage due to the suddenness of the attack and advanced state of their air force.

[47] To increase its logistics supply and rescue operations ability, the IAF inducted 72 HS 748s which were built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) under licence from Avro.

[52] On 22 November 1971, 10 days before the start of a full-scale war, four PAF F-86 Sabre jets attacked Indian and Mukti Bahini positions at Garibpur, near the international border.

[53] On 3 December, India formally declared war against Pakistan following massive preemptive strikes by the PAF against Indian Air Force installations in Srinagar, Ambala, Sirsa, Halwara and Jodhpur.

[58] The IAF undertook strategic bombing of West Pakistan by carrying out raids on oil installations in Karachi, the Mangla Dam and a gas plant in Sindh.

125 Helicopter Unit were utilised to provide suppressive fire against militant strong points and to interdict coastal and clandestine riverine traffic.

[74] Four Mirage 2000 aircraft of 7 Sqn, led by Wg Cdr AV 'Doc' Vaidya, carried out a show of force early that morning, making low-level passes over the islands.

[88] On 20 August 2013, the Indian Air Force created a world record by performing the highest landing of a C-130J at the Daulat Beg Oldi airstrip in Ladakh at the height of 5,065 metres (16,617 ft).

[91] On 13 July 2014, two MiG-21s were sent from Jodhpur Air Base to investigate a Turkish Airlines aircraft over Jaisalmer when it repeated an identification code, provided by another commercial passenger plane that had already entered Indian airspace before it.

[92] Following heightened tensions between India and Pakistan after the 2019 Pulwama attack that was carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) which killed forty servicemen of the Central Reserve Police Force,[93][94] a group of twelve Mirage 2000 fighter planes from the Indian Air Force carried out air strikes on alleged JeM bases in Chakothi and Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Indian officials rejected Pakistani claims of shooting down an Su-30MKI stating that it's impossible to hide an aircraft crash as of now in a populated area like Kashmir and said it's a coverup for the loss of F16.

It was under the command of squadron leaders Siddarth Vashista and Ninad Mandavgane and crashed within ten minutes of take-off from the Srinagar air base.

In October 2019, IAF confirmed that the helicopter was shot down by an Indian SPYDER surface-to-air missile mistaking it as an PAF aircraft and said that five personnel were held guilty for the lapses.

IAF dismissed Group Captain Suman Roy Choudhry Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the Srinagar Air Force Station from his service in 2023 for his negligence during PAF strikes.

Their tasks include counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, providing security to IAF's vulnerably located assets and various air force-specific special operations.

[137] The team has a total of 13 pilots (selected from the fighter stream of the IAF) and operate 9 Bae Hawk mk.132 painted in a "day-glo orange" and white colour scheme.

Over the years reliable sources provided notably divergent estimates of the personnel strength of the Indian Air Force after analysing open-source intelligence.

In 2006, Anthony Cordesman estimated that strength to be 170,000 in the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) publication "The Asian Conventional Military Balance in 2006".

[156] Non combatants enrolled (NCs(E)) were established in British India as personal assistants to the officer class, and are equivalent to the orderly or sahayak of the Indian Army.

[201] The HPT-32 was grounded in July 2009 following a crash that killed two senior flight instructors,[202] but was revived in May 2010[202] and is to be fitted with a parachute recovery system (PRS) to enhance survivability during an emergency in the air and to bring the trainer down safely.

[258] On 3 January 2017, Minister of Defence Manohar Parrikar addressed a media conference and announced plans for a competition to select a Strategic Partner to deliver "... 200 new single engine fighters to be made in India, which will easily cost around (USD)$45 million apiece without weaponry" with an expectation that Lockheed Martin (USA) and Saab (Sweden) will pitch the F-16 Block 70 and Gripen, respectively.

An MoD official said that a global tender will be put to market in the first quarter of 2018,[259] with a private company nominated as the strategic partners production agency followed by a two or more year process to evaluate technical and financial bids and conduct trials, before the final government-to-government deal in 2021.

AFNET is a secure communication network linking command and control centres with offensive aircraft, sensor platforms and ground missile batteries.

The design features multiple layers of security measures, including encryption and intrusion prevention technologies, to hinder and deter espionage efforts.