PIB TrackerSeven air forces flying at Jodhpur, and 32 nations watching
The second Tarang Shakti runs to 12 October with Australia, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the United States in the air, and 32 observer nations on the ground.
What happened
- The Raksha Mantri addressed the second edition of Exercise Tarang Shakti 2026 at Air Force Station Jodhpur on 10 October.
- The exercise ran 26 September to 12 October 2026 with seven participating air forces - Australia, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the USA - and 32 observer nations.
- He described warfare extending into space, cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum and the information domain, shaped by drones, AI, electronic warfare and long-range precision weapons.
- His formulation: future military power will be defined by the speed of sensing, understanding, deciding and acting, not by the number of platforms.
- He named Tejas, Dhruv, Rudra, Prachand, LUH, Akash and AESA radars, and the AMCA programme for fifth-generation stealth, inviting co-development and co-production.
For Prelims
- Tarang Shakti: India’s largest multinational air exercise, first held in 2024 in two phases at Sulur and Jodhpur with about ten participating air forces and eighteen observers. The 2026 edition is a single phase at Jodhpur with seven participants and 32 observers.
- Observer nation: a country that sends officers to watch, brief and debrief without flying its own aircraft. It is the low-cost entry point to a defence relationship, and the number of observers is usually a better measure of diplomatic reach than the number of participants.
- AMCA: the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, a fifth-generation stealth fighter. The CCS approved design and development in March 2024 with a Rs 15,000 crore fully government-funded prototype programme, run by the Aeronautical Development Agency.
- Its execution model (May 2025): the programme was opened to competitive bidding by Indian firms, public or private, singly or in consortia - so HAL is no longer the default production partner for a fighter programme, a first.
- Prachand: the Light Combat Helicopter, built by HAL for high-altitude operations - the only attack helicopter that can land and take off at Siachen altitudes, which is the capability it was designed around after Kargil.
- Akash: a DRDO short-to-medium range surface-to-air missile system, range about 25 km, with a command-guidance architecture; the system India has also offered for export.
- AESA radar: Active Electronically Scanned Array - thousands of small transmit-receive modules steering the beam electronically rather than by moving a dish, giving faster scanning, multiple simultaneous tracks and resistance to jamming. India’s indigenous version is Uttam.
- The electromagnetic spectrum as a domain: jamming, spoofing and emission control decide whether sensors and links work at all - which is why it is now listed alongside land, sea, air, space and cyber rather than treated as a support function.
For UPSC: A defence exercise is usually a photograph; this one comes with a doctrine statement and a list. Deploy it on defence diplomacy and interoperability, on indigenisation and the shift from platform counts to decision speed, on the new domains of warfare, and on India’s neighbourhood policy - Bangladesh and Sri Lanka flew in this exercise.
What it is NOT: The release gives no aircraft numbers, no sortie count and no list of platforms flown by any air force, so the scale of the exercise is not stated. It does not name the 32 observer nations. Nothing on what was practised - no scenario, no phases, no lessons - and no mention of whether this edition included the live-fire or large-force engagement elements the first was built around. On the indigenous list, no induction timeline or order figure is attached to any programme named, and the AMCA reference carries no date for first flight.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.20 · GS3.12 · Linkage L2
Anchor
The second edition of Exercise Tarang Shakti ended its flying phase at Jodhpur with seven participating air forces - Australia, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the United States - and 32 observer nations, the Raksha Mantri addressing the contingents on 10 October.
Substantiation (data)
Set against the first edition in 2024, which ran in two phases at Sulur and Jodhpur with roughly ten participating air forces and eighteen observers, the shape has changed: fewer countries flying, nearly twice as many watching. Two of the seven are immediate neighbours, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which is the part of the list with diplomatic weight rather than operational weight.
Position
The observer count is the better measure of what this exercise is for. Flying a contingent to Rajasthan costs money and political commitment; sending officers to watch costs neither, and it is how a defence relationship begins. An exercise that doubles its observers while holding its participants is working as a shop window - which is consistent with the Raksha Mantri’s own framing of co-development, co-production and eventually export.
Substantiation (example)
The doctrinal claim - that power will be defined by the speed of sensing, understanding, deciding and acting rather than by platform numbers - is the standard argument for networked warfare, and it cuts against the indigenous list that follows it. Tejas, Dhruv, Prachand, Akash and AMCA are platforms. The things that would deliver decision speed - data links, integrated air pictures, electronic warfare suites - are named only in passing, with AESA radars the single sensor mentioned.
Way forward
The testable commitments are co-development and co-production with partner air forces, and aero-engine development, which is the capability gap India has not closed in forty years. The AMCA execution model, which opened a fighter programme to competitive bidding by Indian firms rather than defaulting to HAL, is the concrete reform behind the rhetoric, and its first measurable output will be a prototype contract.
Conclusion
Seven air forces flew and thirty-two countries watched, which is the clearest statement of what Tarang Shakti is: less an exercise in warfighting than an exercise in standing, with a defence industry behind it that now needs orders rather than audiences.
Deploys into: Defence diplomacy and interoperability · Indigenisation in defence manufacturing · New domains of warfare · Neighbourhood military engagement
Ministry of Defence · 2026-10-10 · PRID 2321694 · PIB source ↗