India and Sri Lanka hold DIVEX 2026 diving drill

The fourth edition of the India–Sri Lanka bilateral diving exercise, conducted off Colombo.

What happened

• India and Sri Lanka conducted the fourth edition of IN–SLN DIVEX 2026, a bilateral diving exercise hosted at Colombo from 21 to 28 April 2026.
• India fielded INS Nireekshak, a Diving Support and Submarine Rescue Vessel, with diving teams drawn from both navies operating side by side.
• The exercise featured advanced deep-sea and mixed-gas diving, including dives over two World-War-era wrecks — SS Worcester and SS Perseus — with divers executing operations beyond 55 metres.
• The stated purpose was to sharpen joint underwater search, rescue and salvage capability in the Indian Ocean Region, alongside interoperability between the two diving establishments.
• On the sidelines, India handed over two BHISM cubes (portable disaster-medicine kits) under its Aarogya Maitri humanitarian initiative.
• The engagement was framed within India's MAHASAGAR vision — Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions.

Background & context

A "DIVEX" is a diving exercise, a focused naval engagement distinct from a full combat-oriented maritime exercise. Where a fleet exercise rehearses anti-submarine warfare, gunnery and air defence, a diving exercise concentrates on a narrower but operationally vital craft: underwater search, the recovery of objects from the seabed, ship and submarine salvage, and the rescue of personnel from a distressed or sunken vessel. IN–SLN DIVEX is the recurring bilateral diving series between the Indian Navy (IN) and the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN); the 2026 instalment is its fourth edition, indicating a young but maturing series rather than a one-off engagement.

The choice of platform is itself the headline fact. INS Nireekshak is the Indian Navy's dedicated Diving Support and Submarine Rescue Vessel — a specialised ship built to support saturation diving, to carry diving bells and submersibles, and to host the equipment that lets divers work at depth and undertake submarine rescue. It is not a frigate, destroyer or aircraft carrier; deploying it signals that the exercise's centre of gravity is salvage and rescue, not surface combat. Sending such an asset to Colombo also demonstrates India's ability to project niche underwater capability into a partner's waters — the kind of capacity Sri Lanka itself does not maintain at the same scale.

The exercise sits inside a wider architecture of Indian maritime diplomacy. MAHASAGAR — Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — is the evolved articulation of India's earlier SAGAR framing (Security and Growth for All in the Region), the doctrine under which New Delhi positions itself as the preferred security and development partner across the Indian Ocean. The handover of BHISM cubes (Bharat Health Initiative for Sahyog, Hita and Maitri) under the Aarogya Maitri initiative folds a humanitarian-assistance gesture into the military engagement, reinforcing the "net security provider" and "first responder" identity India seeks across its near seas. Read together, the diving drill, the vessel, the medical cubes and the doctrinal label form a single coherent message about India's role in its immediate maritime neighbourhood.

Sri Lanka occupies a specific place in that neighbourhood. It lies astride the sea lanes of the northern Indian Ocean, only a narrow strait from the Indian mainland, and has been the object of competing infrastructure and naval outreach in the region — making sustained, capability-rich engagement with Colombo a standing priority of India's "Neighbourhood First" policy and its maritime outreach. A salvage-and-rescue exercise is a comparatively low-friction, high-trust form of cooperation: it is visibly humanitarian and technical rather than offensive, which makes it a durable building block for the relationship.

It helps to understand what the diving itself involves, because the technical details are what mark this exercise out. Mixed-gas diving uses breathing mixtures other than ordinary air — typically substituting helium for some of the nitrogen — so that divers can safely work at depths where breathing compressed air would risk nitrogen narcosis and oxygen toxicity. That is precisely why dives "beyond 55 metres," a depth at which air diving becomes hazardous, are singled out in the release: they demonstrate a genuine deep-diving competence rather than routine shallow work. Diving over identified historic wrecks such as SS Worcester and SS Perseus provides realistic, fixed targets on the seabed for search, survey and recovery practice — far more demanding than open-water drills. The capability being rehearsed, then, is the full salvage-and-rescue chain: locating a sunken object, descending safely to it, working at depth, and recovering material or personnel.

The doctrinal lineage is worth fixing precisely, because it is a frequent source of confusion. SAGAR — Security and Growth for All in the Region — was articulated as India's Indian Ocean vision and has been the umbrella phrase for India's outreach to littoral states, covering maritime security, economic cooperation, capacity-building and disaster response. MAHASAGAR is the broadened, more recent framing of the same intent — Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — widening the geographic ambition from "the region" to "across regions" while keeping the core idea of India as a holistic security-and-growth partner. Neither is a treaty or an organisation with members; both are policy visions. The DIVEX engagement is one tangible activity carried out under that visionary umbrella, sitting alongside ship visits, joint patrols, training berths and humanitarian-assistance gestures.

For Prelims

• Name & type: IN–SLN DIVEX 2026 — a bilateral diving exercise between the Indian Navy and the Sri Lanka Navy (a diving/salvage drill, not a full-spectrum combat exercise).
• Edition & venue: 4th edition · held at Colombo, Sri Lanka · 21–28 April 2026.
• Participants: two navies — India and Sri Lanka; diving teams from both, with the Indian Navy providing the support platform.
• Key Indian asset: INS Nireekshak — a Diving Support and Submarine Rescue Vessel of the Indian Navy.
• Activities: deep-sea and mixed-gas diving; dives over the WW-era wrecks SS Worcester and SS Perseus; dives beyond 55 metres; underwater search, rescue and salvage.
• Humanitarian add-on: two BHISM (Bharat Health Initiative for Sahyog, Hita and Maitri) cubes handed over under the Aarogya Maitri initiative.
• Doctrinal frame: aligned with MAHASAGAR — Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — the successor framing to SAGAR.
• Nodal ministry: Ministry of Defence (the Indian Navy executes the engagement).

What it is NOT — the high-confusion points. (1) DIVEX is not a major combat exercise: do not confuse it with India–Sri Lanka SLINEX, the broader bilateral naval exercise, or with the trilateral Dosti Coast Guard exercise (India–Sri Lanka–Maldives). (2) INS Nireekshak is a diving-support and submarine-rescue vessel — not a submarine, a frigate or an aircraft carrier. (3) MAHASAGAR is a vision/doctrine, not a treaty, a grouping with members, or an organisation with a secretariat — it succeeds the SAGAR articulation. (4) BHISM cubes are medical / disaster-relief kits under a humanitarian initiative — they are not weapons or diving equipment.

The comparative set (place DIVEX among India–Sri Lanka and IOR engagements): SLINEX — the principal India–Sri Lanka bilateral naval exercise; IN–SLN DIVEX — the diving/salvage exercise (this release); Dosti — the India–Sri Lanka–Maldives trilateral Coast Guard exercise; Mitra Shakti — the India–Sri Lanka bilateral Army exercise; and the multilateral MILAN exercise hosted by India for navies of the wider region. Knowing which is bilateral vs trilateral, and which is naval vs army vs Coast Guard, is the typical "match the pairs" trap.

Why it matters

The exercise addresses a concrete operational gap. The northern Indian Ocean is one of the world's busiest shipping corridors and is dotted with wrecks, reefs and heavy traffic; the risk of a vessel sinking, a submarine becoming disabled, or cargo and personnel needing recovery from depth is real and shared by every littoral state. Few regional navies maintain dedicated submarine-rescue and deep-salvage capability. By rehearsing mixed-gas diving and salvage over real wrecks with a partner navy, India both keeps its own niche skills current and extends a capability to Sri Lanka that Colombo would struggle to build alone. That turns a technical drill into a strategic instrument: it deepens interoperability, builds habits of cooperation, and reinforces India's claim to be the region's net security provider and first responder.

It also illustrates how India blends hard and soft instruments in a single engagement. The diving drill is the military core; the BHISM medical cubes under Aarogya Maitri are the humanitarian gesture; MAHASAGAR is the doctrinal wrapper that ties both to a stated vision for the Indian Ocean. For an aspirant, the release is a compact case study in how exercises, capacity-building and maritime doctrine are used together as foreign-policy tools in the neighbourhood.

For Mains

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