By Airspace Watch News Desk
U.S. Air Force F-35 fighter jets will join India’s multinational Tarang Shakti air exercise, marking the first time the fifth-generation stealth aircraft will conduct tactical missions with Indian fighters from an Indian air base. The exercise begins Saturday at Jodhpur air base in Rajasthan and runs through Oct. 12, according to Defense News.
The deployment will give the Indian Air Force and other participants an opportunity to operate alongside an advanced stealth aircraft during the drills. Eight countries are taking part in the exercise, while 32 additional countries are attending as observers. Jodhpur is about 200 kilometers from India’s border with Pakistan.
India does not operate a fifth-generation fighter. Its combat aircraft for the exercise will include Rafales, Su-30MKIs, Tejas fighters and Mirage 2000s. France is also deploying Rafale aircraft, and the United Arab Emirates is bringing F-16s. Germany, Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Greece are contributing air assets, including surveillance and transport aircraft.
The F-35 participation will allow Indian and other participating crews to gain experience operating with a stealth aircraft and to examine aspects of its employment. Those areas include the integration of sensor data, operations within a networked force and the difficulties advanced low-observable aircraft can create for opposing radar systems.
The exercise comes as China expands its fleet of fifth-generation fighters. India’s participation will expose its air force to a type of aircraft it does not currently operate, while the multinational format will bring together aircraft and personnel from countries using different platforms and methods of employing air power.
Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, India’s vice chief of the Air Staff, said Tarang Shakti is intended to prepare participants for changing forms of warfare rather than demonstrate capabilities they already understand. “We do not conduct Tarang Shakti to demonstrate what we already know. We conduct it to discover what we still need to learn,” Dixit said.
He said the exercise would allow participants to test assumptions, challenge procedures, understand different methods of employing air power and improve interoperability. He described the participating countries as bringing their own operational experience to a realistic training environment where those approaches could be examined together.
The F-35 has appeared twice at defense exhibitions in India, and Indian Air Force aircraft operated alongside the fighter during joint exercises in Australia two years ago. The Jodhpur exercise, however, will be the first occasion on which F-35s undertake tactical missions with Indian fighters from an Indian air base.
Dixit also said India intends to use the air exercise to examine lessons from its brief conflict with Pakistan in May of the previous year, when both countries deployed fighter aircraft. He did not describe the F-35 deployment and that review as a single activity, but identified the conflict lessons as another issue India wants to examine through the air exercise.
The American participation also reflects continuing defense cooperation between New Delhi and Washington. That cooperation continues as the broader relationship faces friction over trade disputes and India’s purchases of Russian oil. Tarang Shakti will conclude Oct. 12.