Exercise Tarang Shakti 2026, India’s second multinational air exercise, runs from September 26 to October 12 at Air Force Station Jodhpur, and will mark the first time the US Air Force’s F-35 Lightning II has operated from Indian soil.

Hosting a stealth fighter like the F-35 is not a small logistical or diplomatic step. It requires a level of security clearance and operational trust between air forces that goes beyond simply inviting a country to send aircraft.

The scale of participation, eight countries with actual air assets and 32 more as observers, also points to Tarang Shakti being treated as a serious interoperability exercise rather than a symbolic gathering, since observer nations typically attend to learn from, rather than fly in, a multinational exercise.

For India’s own aerospace industry, an exercise of this scale alongside advanced foreign aircraft is also an opportunity to showcase domestically built platforms like the Tejas in a realistic, multinational operating environment.

The practical value of such exercises tends to show up later, in how well different air forces can coordinate during genuine joint operations, rather than in the headline of which aircraft attended.

The exercise aims to expose participants to planning and execution of multinational joint combat operations in a realistic, contemporary battlespace.

It is designed to help air forces derive tactically viable solutions from joint exercises.

The exercise will cover a wide range of air operations, including counter-air, air defence, force combat, reconnaissance, airlift and air-to-air refuelling.

The first edition of Tarang Shakti was held in 2024, in Tamil Nadu.

The exercise is expected to showcase the growing capabilities of the Indian aerospace industry, according to the IAF Vice Chief.

India’s own Tejas Light Combat Aircraft has featured in earlier editions of the exercise.

Multinational air exercises of this kind are used by participating countries to build interoperability between air forces.

Indian Air Force Tejas fighter jet at Exercise Tarang Shakti (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, GODL-India