Indian Military Exercises: Who Trains With Whom, by Country and Service

The Country-by-Service Grid

Read across a row for one country; read down a column for one service. A dash means we found no confirmed exercise of that kind. Special forces exercises sit in the Army column and are marked SF. "Multilateral" marks a shared exercise that the partner also joins, not a bilateral one. An "Nth" is the edition number PIB gave; the year and host are of that latest edition.

Multilateral Exercises: Host and India's Role

In a multilateral exercise one country hosts and the rest join. Know the host; the host is what questions ask.

The big naval picture, including MILAN and the fleet reviews, sits on the fleet operations page. In July 2026 our report on Pitch Black followed the IAF's Rafale deployment. The Navy's partner list, with the Indian Ocean choke points where much of it takes place, continues on Indian Ocean chokepoints and bases.

What the Names Mean, and the Look-Alike Traps

PIB explains a few names itself; the rest are plain translations. Where PIB gave the meaning, it is marked.

How Hosting Rotates and Editions Are Counted

Most Army exercises alternate between the two countries, so the venue you remember is the venue of the other edition. PIB's own releases give the pattern.

Edition numbers are the partner's own count and are written in two ways: ordinals ("22nd Yudh Abhyas") and Roman numerals ("MAITREE-XV"). Either way, they count editions, not years. Naval series run longer: SIMBEX reached its 33rd edition in 2026 and Malabar its 28th in 2024. Biennial multilateral exercises such as RIMPAC, Pitch Black and Bright Star fall in alternate years, so a question that asks "which year" is usually asking for the host's calendar.

India's Own Exercises

Not every exercise is with a partner. The big ones that India runs for itself are covered in the service sections: the Navy's theatre-level TROPEX (held every two years; the 2025 edition ran from January to March) on the fleet operations page, the IAF's Vayu Shakti (Pokhran, 27 Feb 2026) on the flying squadrons page and, for the Army, the command pages. The joint ones come under tri-services: the Navy-led Tri-Services Exercise Trishul of November 2025 used the creek and desert sectors of Rajasthan and Gujarat, with the Army's Southern Command and the IAF's South Western Air Command as main formations.

Pages in This Section

This page is the grid. Each service page below goes deeper, with every edition and the exact meaning of the name.

For the treaties and logistics agreements that make these exercises possible, see defence agreements. The services have their own sections: Indian Army, Indian Navy and Indian Air Force.

Exam pins

Asked in past papers

The papers ask partner-country matches almost every year. Five examples:

Practice MCQs (with answers)

1. Which pair is correctly matched?
   1. Shakti: India and Indonesia, special forces
   2. Garuda: Indian Air Force and French air force
   3. Mitra Shakti: India and Maldives
   4. Ekuverin: India and Sri Lanka
2. Nomadic Elephant, an annual platoon-level exercise, is held alternately in India and
   1. Mongolia
   2. Kazakhstan
   3. Nepal
   4. Kyrgyzstan
3. Tiger Triumph is an India-US exercise on
   1. counter-insurgency in jungle terrain
   2. air combat
   3. anti-submarine warfare
   4. tri-service humanitarian assistance and disaster relief
4. Pitch Black is a biennial multinational air exercise hosted by the air force of
   1. the United States
   2. the UAE
   3. Australia
   4. Japan
5. SIMBEX, begun in 1994 as Exercise Lion King, is between the Indian Navy and the navy of
   1. Sri Lanka
   2. Singapore
   3. Indonesia
   4. Malaysia
6. Khanjar is a special forces exercise between India and
   1. Kyrgyzstan
   2. Kazakhstan
   3. Uzbekistan
   4. Mongolia

Where to Go Next

For the careers behind these exercises, start with career in the Indian Army. In the interview, defence cooperation with the US, Japan and Australia is a standard topic in the GD guide. Graduates build their GK for officer entry through the CDS course; Class 12 candidates through the NDA batches, with SSB training alongside.