IAF’s Tarang Shakti-26 Brings Eight Air Forces, Including US F-35s, and 32 Observers to Jodhpur

The news

New Delhi and Jodhpur (Rajasthan). The Indian Air Force (IAF) will host the second edition of its largest-ever multinational air exercise, Tarang Shakti-26, from September 26 to October 12 at Air Force Station, Jodhpur, and adjoining air bases, The Indian Express reports. Eight forces will fly: India, Australia, Bangladesh, France, the United States, Germany, Sri Lanka and the UAE. Thirty-two countries will attend as observers, taking the total to around 40, and around 10 Air Chiefs or equivalents are likely to attend. Foreign aircraft include the US’s F-35, France’s Rafale, the UAE’s F-16 and Bangladesh’s C-130J transport aircraft, besides other air assets; India will field the Rafale, Mirage-2000, Jaguar, Tejas, MiG-29 and Su-30 MKI. The maiden edition was held in August-September 2024 in two phases, with 11 countries participating with their air assets. Briefing the media on Tuesday, Vice-Chief of the Air Staff Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit said Tarang Shakti had changed the IAF’s earlier approach of engaging foreign air forces largely through bilateral exercises. The first edition, he said, was an important transition to planning, operating and integrating with multiple air forces simultaneously, and “Tarang Shakti-26 is the next logical step”. The exercise aims to analyse tactical employment philosophy against modern air-to-air and surface-to-air weapons, to enhance interoperability, that is, the ability of different forces to operate together using compatible procedures, and to identify best practices. It will involve beyond visual range (BVR) and within visual range combat missions, air mobility operations, dynamic targeting (striking targets that emerge during a mission rather than those planned in advance), air-to-air refuelling and combat search and rescue, the recovery of aircrew downed in hostile territory. Air Marshal Dixit said recent conflicts had highlighted precision, integrated air defence, unmanned systems, information dominance, space-based capabilities and the ability to combine them in multi-domain operations. “Operation Sindoor has reinforced many of these realities for us,” he said, citing intelligence-led operations, precision, integrated air and missile defence, counter-UAS (countering unmanned aerial systems, or drones) and jointness across domains. “We do not conduct Tarang Shakti to demonstrate what we already know. We conduct it to discover what we still need to learn,” he said, adding that partners bring their own operational experience, and a realistic training environment lets forces test assumptions, challenge procedures and understand different ways of employing air power. The syllabus link is GS3 on security challenges and GS2 on India’s bilateral and multilateral relations.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Military exercises are an instrument of defence diplomacy, and hosting is a statement of standing. The IAF has long run bilateral air exercises such as Garuda with France, Cope India with the United States and Indradhanush with the United Kingdom, and has flown as a guest in multinational exercises such as Red Flag, hosted by the US Air Force, and Pitch Black, hosted by the Royal Australian Air Force at Darwin. The Indian Navy’s MILAN has for years been India’s flagship hosted multilateral naval gathering. Hosting a multinational exercise means setting the scenarios, rules and standards others train to, which is a form of influence beyond the training value. Tarang Shakti, first held in 2024, is the IAF’s equivalent of that convening role.
2. Interoperability rests on agreements as much as on aircraft. India has signed four foundational agreements with the United States: the General Security of Military Information Agreement (2002), the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (2016), the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (2018) and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for geospatial cooperation (2020). It also has reciprocal logistics support arrangements with partners such as France (2018) and Australia (2020). These agreements allow refuelling, repair, secure communication and information sharing between forces. Exercises then turn those paper permissions into practised procedures, which is what ‘interoperability’ means in practice.
3. Jointness is now a legal and institutional project in India. The post of Chief of Defence Staff was created in December 2019, and the first incumbent took office on January 1, 2020; the CDS is the Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and Secretary of the Department of Military Affairs in the Ministry of Defence. The Kargil Review Committee and the Group of Ministers that followed it had pointed to poor coordination between the services. The Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Act, 2023 empowers the commanders of inter-services organisations to exercise disciplinary and administrative control over personnel of all three services under them. Integrated theatre commands, which would place Army, Navy and Air Force units in a region under one commander, have been under discussion for several years.
4. The IAF flies one of the world’s most varied fleets. The Su-30MKI is a Russian design built under licence by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL); the MiG-29 is also of Russian origin; the Rafale and Mirage-2000 are French, made by Dassault Aviation; the Jaguar is an Anglo-French design; and the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft was designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency under the Ministry of Defence and is built by HAL. The F-35, made by Lockheed Martin, is a fifth-generation stealth fighter designed to be hard to detect by radar. Beyond visual range combat uses radar-guided missiles fired at targets the pilot cannot see, while within visual range combat is close-in dogfighting. A mixed fleet reduces dependence on any one supplier but multiplies the training, spares and integration burden.

Why UPSC loves this

1. Prelims asks which exercise goes with which country. UPSC has repeatedly set questions matching military exercises with partner countries and services, and questions on defence platforms and indigenous programmes such as Tejas. Tarang Shakti, as India’s own hosted multinational air exercise, is a natural candidate, along with the distinction between bilateral exercises such as Garuda and multilateral ones such as Pitch Black and Red Flag.
2. GS2 and GS3 meet in defence diplomacy. GS2 covers bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India, and GS3 covers security challenges and the various security forces and their mandate. Mains questions have asked about India’s role as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean region and about defence cooperation with the Quad partners. The participant list here, from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to the United States and France, is concrete evidence for such answers.
3. Jointness and theatre commands are a live Mains theme. Questions on the Chief of Defence Staff, theatre commands and integration of the services recur. The Vice-Chief’s emphasis on jointness across domains after Operation Sindoor gives a current, attributable reference point for such answers.

Analysis

1. Moving from guest to host is a claim to convening power. For decades India trained with others largely on their terms, flying in exercises designed by the US or Australia. Hosting eight air forces and 32 observers means India now writes the scenarios, sets the pace and decides whom to invite, which is influence of a quieter kind than arms sales or treaties. It also tells smaller partners that India can be a hub for regional air power training, not merely a participant. The counter-view is cost: large exercises consume flying hours, fuel and aircraft availability, and the benefit must be shown in capability, not ceremony.
2. The guest list is a map of India’s strategic priorities. The eight flying forces combine two immediate neighbours, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, a Gulf partner in the UAE, two Quad partners in the United States and Australia, and two European powers, France and Germany. That spread matches India’s Neighbourhood First policy, its Gulf ties and its Indo-Pacific partnerships in a single event. Bangladesh flying a C-130J at Jodhpur signals that military-to-military ties with Dhaka are being kept open whatever the state of politics. Russia, still a major source of Indian fighters, is not among the eight flying forces the paper names; whether it observes is not reported, and the list should not be over-read, but it reflects where India’s training partnerships are growing.
3. Learning in public has limits. Air Marshal Dixit’s line that the exercise is meant to discover what the IAF still needs to learn is the right philosophy, since exercises that only rehearse known drills produce false confidence. But with around 40 countries present, including 32 observers, the most sensitive tactics and electronic procedures are unlikely to be exercised openly. The real learning will therefore come from generic but hard problems, such as coordinating many aircraft types in a crowded sky and refuelling across forces, rather than from India’s specific war plans. That is still valuable, because coalition-style coordination is precisely what a mixed-origin fleet finds hardest.
4. An air exercise cannot by itself deliver the jointness Operation Sindoor demanded. The Vice-Chief listed integrated air and missile defence, counter-drone capability and jointness across domains as Sindoor’s lessons. Integrated air defence in India involves Army air defence units and naval assets as well as the IAF, and jointness means shared command, not merely shared airspace. Tarang Shakti trains the IAF to integrate with foreign air forces, which is useful, but integration with the Army and Navy at home depends on theatre commands and the implementation of the 2023 Inter-Services Organisations Act. The counter-view is that an air force must first master complex air operations before it can plug into joint structures, and multinational exercises raise that baseline.
5. A mixed fleet makes interoperability both harder and more necessary. India flies Russian, French, Anglo-French and indigenous aircraft, and now trains alongside American F-35s and Emirati F-16s. Technical interoperability with Western forces is limited by differing systems and by India’s own insistence on strategic autonomy, so the realistic gain is procedural interoperability: common language, shared tactics, and understanding how partners fight. That is what allows cooperation in humanitarian relief or crisis evacuation even without an alliance. Tejas flying in the same exercise as fifth-generation fighters also gives India a showcase for its indigenous platform, though it invites direct comparison as well.

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