OPINION | Tarang Shakti 2026: When air exercises become instruments of statecraft

Every exercise gets its photograph. This year's was easy to guess: an American F-35 parked among French Rafales, in the Rajasthan heat, on an Indian air base.

Tarang Shakti 2026 ran at Air Force Station Jodhpur from September 26 to October 12, under the theme ‘Power in Partnership’. It was the second edition, after 2024. Seven foreign air forces flew with the Indian Air Force: Australia, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the United States. Thirty-two more countries sent observers. The flying covered counter-air, air defence, reconnaissance, airlift and air-to-air refuelling, and the F-35 was reported to be flying with the IAF in an exercise for the first time.

That is the exercise report, and there are plenty of those. I would rather ask what the exercise was for.

Read the guest list, not the aircraft

An air force that flies Su-30MKIs and Rafales stood alongside American, French, German, Australian and Emirati crews, and in the same fortnight, two neighbours. Sri Lanka. Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is the one I keep coming back to. Dhaka confirmed on August 26 that it is buying Chinese J-10CE fighters. A month later, its air force was at Jodhpur. You can read that as a small hedge by Dhaka, or as proof that India's door is still open to the countries it worries about. I lean towards the second, with the first kept in mind. Defence diplomacy earns its keep when it reaches capitals you are unsure of, not the ones you already trust.

Sri Lanka matters for a quieter reason. A small air force sitting on a very large piece of the Indian Ocean gets to see how India operates, up close, without anyone making a speech about it. India gets a familiar face on its southern approaches. Neither side will describe it that way in public, and that is rather the point.

One more thing from the list. Russia, whose aircraft still fill much of the IAF's own line, was not among the seven. I would not over-read that. It is still worth noticing how comfortable India has become standing among suppliers who do not stand together.

What an exercise can and cannot do

Interoperability sounds grand. In practice it is mostly dull. Do the radios talk to each other? Do pilots use the same words for the same things? Can one air force's tanker feed another's fighter? Is there an agreed way to keep a crowded sky orderly at the end of a long day? The exercise's own stated aims included aerospace safety and understanding each other's procedures. That is the real work, and none of it makes a photograph.

Air-to-air refuelling was on the mission list, and to my mind it is the most telling item on it. Passing fuel between aircraft of two different air forces, at speed, leaves little room for good intentions. The equipment has to fit, the procedures have to match, and each crew has to trust the other's discipline. If that works, a lot of other things are likely to work too. If it does not, you have learned something useful and much cheaper than learning it in a crisis.

Eisenhower's line fits: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” An exercise is the planning part. Nobody expects to fight the scenario as scripted. What you gain is habit, and the personal contacts that come with it. Anyone who has spent time in uniform knows the officer you shared a briefing room with is the one who picks up the phone years later.

Where RAKSHA meets the runway

Barely three weeks before Jodhpur, the defence minister released RAKSHA, the ten-year defence diplomacy document. One of its four pillars is capacity building: joint exercises, training, sharing of best practice. Tarang Shakti is that sentence put on a runway. Which makes it the first real field test of whether the document can be turned into something visible.

Turning goodwill into something that lasts

This is the part the Jodhpur coverage skips. Seventeen days of flying create goodwill. Goodwill fades. Here is where I would look.

Travel as well as host. A host learns about its visitors. A guest learns just as much about the host. If India is going to be a serious partner, the IAF has to be a regular visitor at its partners' exercises, flying their rules in their skies. Reciprocity is what turns an invitation into a relationship.

Follow the observers. Thirty-two countries watched. UNI's closing report spoke of a focus on air power cooperation and indigenous capabilities. Whether any observer becomes a customer depends on spares, training slots and service support, the unglamorous things. And I would not read a purchase signal into any foreign fighter turning up as a guest. A visit is not a sales pitch.

Ask for the quiet work. Seven air forces and some of the best equipment in the world sat on one ramp. Which of these partnerships can become joint maintenance, joint training, co-development? That conversation happens away from cameras, and it is where statecraft is actually done.

And be honest about the limit. Flying well together does not mean anyone will stand with you in a crisis. Seven air forces in 17 days is a courtship, not a treaty.

The test comes later

If this is statecraft, it should show in a few years, and the signs are not mysterious. Does the circle of partners widen? Do repeat participants come back, and bring more with them? Does the IAF get invited as often as it invites? Does an observer turn into a buyer, or a training partner, or a maintenance partner? Do the follow-on training slots and staff talks actually get filled?

None of this is a criticism of Jodhpur. It was a well-run exercise with a guest list that tells a story. But exercises are easy to count and hard to measure. A year from now, nobody will ask how many aircraft flew. They will ask what changed.

The aircraft have gone home. What stays is the procedures, the phone numbers, and the habit of trusting a stranger's voice on the radio at night.

(The author is a Defence & Strategic Affairs Expert, Certified Independent Director (IICA), ESG Advocate and Governance Thought Leader.

Contact: 5cg9220rg@gmail.com | +91-7620080437 | linkedin.com/in/mylapore-venkata-shashidhar)

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.)