Defence Current Affairs September 2026

The second edition of the ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise (AIME-2026) began at Subic Bay, Philippines, on 28 September 2026 under the theme Anchored in Trust, United at Sea, running to 2 October. India is represented by INS Sahyadri and INS Kulish, alongside maritime forces of ASEAN member states. Harsh Kumar Jain, India's Ambassador to the Philippines, was Guest of Honour at the opening ceremony. The exercise has a Harbour Phase of Subject Matter Expert Exchanges, operational synchronisation and community engagement, followed by a Sea Phase of coordinated serials. It advances India's Act East Policy and the MAHASAGAR vision.

A 60-member Indian Armed Forces contingent departed for Oskemen, Kazakhstan, for the ninth edition of the India–Kazakhstan joint military exercise KAZIND-2026, held from 28 September to 11 October 2026. The Indian side is drawn mainly from a battalion of the Garhwal Rifles, with personnel from other arms, services and the Indian Air Force; Kazakhstan fields a contingent of matching strength, largely from its Land Forces. Training focuses on joint counter-terrorism operations in semi-urban and mountainous terrain under a United Nations mandate, with emphasis on joint planning and execution, air mobility, and the integrated employment of unmanned aerial systems and counter-UAS capabilities.

The Indian Air Force began the second edition of its multinational air exercise Tarang Shakti 2026 at Air Force Station Jodhpur, Rajasthan, on 26 September 2026, running until 12 October. Over 40 countries are involved: eight Friendly Foreign Countries — Australia, Bangladesh, France, Germany, Greece, Sri Lanka, the UAE and the USA — are flying air assets, while 32 nations attend as observers. The USAF F-35 Lightning II is operating from Indian soil for the first time, alongside IAF Rafale, Su-30MKI, MiG-29, Jaguar, Mirage-2000 and LCA Tejas. Drills cover counter-air, BVR and WVR combat, air-to-air refuelling and combat search and rescue.

INS Trishul reached Toulon for the 24th edition of VARUNA, the India-France naval exercise running since 1993 and the flagship maritime pillar of the two countries' strategic partnership. Exercise VARUNA pairs the Indian Navy with the French Navy. The drills began in 1993 and were formally named VARUNA in 2001. The 2026 edition works on interoperability, exchange of operational experience and best practices, and mutual understanding of procedures. Toulon is France's principal Mediterranean naval base. VARUNA follows the 13th edition of SLINEX-26 with Sri Lanka at Visakhapatnam earlier in September 2026, showing India running neighbourhood Indian Ocean drills and long-range blue-water partnerships in parallel.

The Indian Navy and the Sri Lanka Navy conducted the 13th edition of SLINEX-26, their annual bilateral maritime exercise, at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh from 17 to 21 September 2026. India was represented by INS Kavaratti, an indigenously built anti-submarine warfare corvette, while Sri Lanka fielded SLNS Sindurala. Conceptualised in 2005, SLINEX has grown into a two-phase drill covering harbour interaction and sea manoeuvres aimed at interoperability, communication procedures and seamanship. The edition runs alongside India's wider maritime outreach this week, with INS Sahyadri and INS Kulish arriving at Subic Bay, Philippines on 20 September for the ADMM-Plus Joint Cooperation Activity, underlining India's simultaneous engagement in the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.

The 4th edition of Exercise 'Samudra Laksamana', the bilateral maritime exercise between the Indian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN), was conducted at Lumut, Malaysia in September 2026. Held under India's operational deployment, it aims to deepen professional knowledge-sharing, coordination and operational synergy between the two navies. The drill comprises a Harbour Phase - cross-deck visits, subject-matter-expert exchanges, professional discussions and sporting interactions - followed by a Sea Phase of operational interactions, maritime cooperation activities and joint training. The RMN was represented by KD Lekir. It continues a busy Indian Navy calendar that also saw the Colombo Security Conclave table-top exercise at Visakhapatnam this month.

The 22nd edition of Exercise Yudh Abhyas 2026, the annual bilateral military exercise between the Indian Army and the US Army, began on 9 September 2026 and runs to 28 September 2026 at Bikaner in Rajasthan and Auli in Uttarakhand. Conducted under the Operation Pathways framework, it focuses on interoperability, information sharing, operational readiness and emerging battlefield technologies. The exercise has a Command Post Exercise (CPX) for operational planning and coordination, a Field Training Exercise (FTX) with tactical drills and joint manoeuvres, and concludes with a live-fire demonstration of integrated combat capabilities. The 21st edition, Yudh Abhyas 2025, was hosted at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, in the United States.

The fourth Tri-Services Future Warfare Course concluded in New Delhi on 30 August 2026 after a four-week programme that began on 3 August at the Manekshaw Centre. It was run under Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff and coordinated by the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, drawing officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force along with academics, government officials and defence-industry participants. The syllabus covered artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, cyber and cognitive warfare, autonomous systems, space operations and grey-zone warfare. Chief of Defence Staff General N.S. Raja Subramani interacted with participants, Air Marshal Tejinder Singh handed over completion certificates, and graduating officers received Post Graduate Diplomas in Future Warfare.

India successfully tested its first indigenous long-range one-way attack (OWA) drone, 'KAL', at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan. The system offers a range of up to 1,000 km, endurance of 7-8 hours and a payload capacity of about 50 kg. Navigation combines a multi-band GNSS receiver with an inertial navigation system (INS), allowing the drone to operate in GPS-denied and jammed environments. It is designed for long-range strike, suppression of enemy air defences and precision targeting. KAL adds to a broader indigenous counter-drone and directed-energy push, alongside DRDO's 30 kW-class directed-energy weapon being developed under the Integrated Drone Detection and Interdiction System.

INS Sudarshini, the Indian Navy's sail training ship, reached Alexandria in Egypt on 23 September 2026 during the Lokayan 26 transoceanic expedition - its second call at the port in the same deployment. A three-masted barque used for sail training and seamanship instruction, she began the 10-month voyage from Kochi on 20 January 2026, planned to cover about 22,000 nautical miles, 18 ports and 13 countries. The route crossed the Arabian Sea, Red Sea and Mediterranean, transited the Suez Canal, and completed a first Atlantic crossing before reaching Antigua on 27 May 2026. The Alexandria call included courtesy calls and cross-deck engagements with the Egyptian Navy.

Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) laid the keel at Kochi on 18 September 2026 for the first of six Next Generation Missile Vessels (NGMVs) for the Indian Navy, in a ceremony performed by Vice Admiral Sanjay Sadhu, Controller of Warship Production and Acquisition. The NGMVs will do 33 knots with a crew of 80, and will carry surface-to-surface missiles, anti-missile defences, air surveillance systems and fire control radars, making them among the Navy's most weapon-intensive surface combatants. The six-ship contract was signed on 30 March 2023 for about Rs 9,805 crore; steel cutting for the first vessel, BY-531, began in December 2024 and delivery is due from March 2027.

A Pakistan Navy vessel collided with an Indian Navy warship on routine surveillance in international waters of the North Arabian Sea on the evening of 15 September 2026, roughly 120-130 nautical miles east of the Oman coast. No major structural damage was reported. India said the Pakistani ship closed in at high speed and manoeuvred in an unsafe and unprofessional manner. On 16 September, the Ministry of External Affairs summoned Pakistan's Chargé d'Affaires in New Delhi to lodge a strong protest. India cited a breach of the 1991 India-Pakistan Agreement on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements and of the COLREGs.

The Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) concluded a three-day Table Top Exercise at the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam, on 12 September 2026; it had begun on 9 September. Delegations and maritime-security experts from CSC member states and observer nations worked through simulated scenarios for over 72 hours on a coordinated response to illicit maritime activity in the Indian Ocean Region - maritime terrorism, narcotics smuggling, human trafficking and illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Participants also reviewed information-sharing arrangements and standard operating procedures for Maritime Domain Awareness, a core CSC pillar alongside counter-terrorism, transnational crime and disaster relief.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and SkyPulse Solutions IFSC signed a Memorandum of Understanding worth Rs 2,491 crore to build a framework for acquiring, financing, leasing and lifecycle-supporting HAL-manufactured helicopters. The programme covers 30 helicopters — both single and twin-engine — in two phases: 10 between 2027 and 2029 and 20 from 2030 onwards, with induction beginning in FY 2027-28. The fleet is meant for Helicopter Emergency Medical Services, disaster response, search and rescue, tourism, UDAN connectivity, government and charter flying, and the MoU also covers MRO, training and spares support, reinforcing the Make in India push in rotary-wing aviation.

DRDO signed its first high-value deep-tech project agreement under the Technology Development Fund (TDF) scheme with Zero mK India Private Limited in New Delhi, for indigenous development of a 20 millikelvin (mK) dilution refrigerator for quantum applications. A dilution refrigerator is a specialised cryogenic system; 20 mK is roughly 0.02 Kelvin, near absolute zero. It is the first initiative under the Rs 500 crore corpus approved by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. The project will be monitored and mentored by Dr Meena Mishra, Director of the Solid State Physics Laboratory (SSPL). It supports the National Quantum Mission while cutting dependence on imported cryogenic infrastructure.

The DRDO is developing a 30 kW-class Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) under the Integrated Drone Detection and Interdiction System (IDD&IS) Mk-IIA programme — a laser-based counter-drone system designed to detect, track and destroy small unmanned aerial systems, scaling up the power of the earlier Mk-II variant. Directed energy weapons engage targets with concentrated laser energy instead of projectiles, giving a very low cost per shot and near-instant engagement. The work runs alongside India's wider drone-warfare push, seen this week in the first flight test of the indigenous long-range one-way attack drone 'KAL' at Pokhran, and complements kinetic air-defence layers already in service.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh called for an integrated civil-military aerospace ecosystem at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bengaluru on 18 September 2026, linking it to indigenous strength in aircraft design, avionics, propulsion, composite materials, flight control systems and certification. At the same event HAL handed over LCA Tejas twin-seater trainers and HTT-40 basic trainers to the Indian Air Force, and Dhruv Next Generation helicopters to Pawan Hans. He flagged delays in defence technology projects as a cause of capability gaps and cost escalation, and named artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, electronic warfare, cyber technologies and next-generation propulsion as priority areas.

Adani Defence & Aerospace and Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited (IRRPL) signed a five-year agreement for indigenously manufactured 7.62x39 mm small-calibre ammunition for India's AK-203 assault rifle programme. The ammunition will be made at Adani's Kanpur facility, while IRRPL builds the rifles at Korwa in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh. The Ministry of Defence contracted IRRPL in December 2021 for 6,01,427 rifles to replace the ageing INSAS. The gas-operated AK-203 fires 700 rounds per minute with an effective range of about 800 metres. IRRPL recently test-fired 'Sher', a fully indigenous AK-203 - a supply-chain closure that mirrors the same day's DAC clearance for indigenisation-linked procurement.

The Indian Army has set up AASHVAST — Assessment and Analysis of Electronic Systems Hardware for Vulnerabilities and Security Threats — a software analysis and validation laboratory at the Directorate General of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering (DG EME) headquarters in New Delhi. The lab scans military drone firmware and other electronics for backdoors, hidden remote-access tools and secret command paths, and verifies that systems accept only manufacturer-approved updates. It operates as a completely air-gapped, offline, read-only environment, and can test how drones withstand GPS spoofing and jamming. It was inaugurated at Delhi Cantonment by Chief of the Army Staff General Dhiraj Seth on 14 August 2026.

Tata Boeing Aerospace Limited (TBAL) delivered its 400th 'Made in India' fuselage for the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter from its Hyderabad facility on 7 September 2026. TBAL, a 2016 joint venture between Boeing and Tata Advanced Systems Limited, builds the fuselages in a 52,000-square-metre plant employing more than 750 engineers and technicians, and supplies them to Boeing's global assembly lines, including aircraft destined for the United States Army. The first Indian-built fuselage was delivered on 1 June 2018 and the 300th on 10 February 2025. India's own Apache fleet numbers 28 — 22 with the Indian Air Force and six delivered to the Indian Army in 2025.

DRDO and the Advanced Centre of Research in High Energy Materials (ACRHEM) at the University of Hyderabad secured an Indian patent for BAM-H24, a next-generation solid rocket propellant fuel. The Patent Office granted Patent No. 599900 on 20 August 2026 on an application filed in December 2022. Developed by Dr Muddamarri Hanumantha Rao and Prof Muralidharan Krishnamurthi, BAM-H24 is a boron-, hydrogen- and nitrogen-rich energetic compound usable as a solid rocket fuel, fuel additive and burn-rate accelerator. It offers high chemical and thermal stability, low impact and friction sensitivity, non-hygroscopic behaviour, high specific impulse and reduced ignition delay for missiles and space launch vehicles.

Kalyani Strategic Systems Limited (KSSL), the wholly-owned defence subsidiary of Bharat Forge Limited, signed a Strategic Alliance Agreement with French defence major Thales Group in September 2026 to build industrial capability in India for unguided and laser-guided variants of Thales' 70-mm rocket systems. The agreement was signed during Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever's state visit to India (2–4 September 2026). The first fully India-assembled rocket system is expected in early 2027. These systems support counter-drone missions and multi-platform integration on rotary-wing platforms including the ALH-WSI and Light Combat Helicopter, and are already used by 70 armed forces across 55 countries.

The Indian Air Force successfully conducted the drop trial of the indigenously designed and developed Long-Range Glide Bomb (LRGB) 'Khagantak-243', announced on 2 September 2026, meeting all mission objectives in a stand-off precision-strike programme. Khagantak-243 is a 300 kg-class airborne precision-guided glide bomb able to engage targets more than 140 km away when released from around 12,000 metres, letting fighter aircraft strike from outside heavily defended airspace. It was developed jointly by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), which supplied the electronics and guidance subsystems, and private firm JSR Dynamics, which developed the bomb body and control systems. Glide bombs use aerodynamic surfaces to extend range after release.

India cleared a Rs 810.79 crore buy of 160 SAT-SAAW precision glide bombs — designed by DRDO, built by Bharat Dynamics — giving the IAF a stand-off weapon to knock out enemy airfields. The Ministry of Defence signed the contract on 23 September 2026 in New Delhi before Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh, under the Buy (Indian-IDDM) category. The Satellite Smart Anti-Airfield Weapon is an air-to-ground precision-guided glide bomb launched from Jaguar, Hawk and Su-30MKI aircraft. Indigenous content is 60%, covering the Initial Measurement Unit, Long Impact Delay Fuse and Twin Store Carrier. Deliveries run from 2027-28 to 2028-29.

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, approved capital acquisition proposals worth about Rs 1.10 lakh crore at the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) stage. The Army's share covers CBRN reconnaissance vehicles, High Mobility Vehicles, Advanced Light Helicopters, self-propelled mechanical mine layers, trawl tanks and the Sarvatra Bridge System. The Navy gets Arudhra radars and marine gas turbines for indigenous warship propulsion, while the Air Force clears a Ground-Based Multi-Purpose Jammer and the Defence Forces Secure Access Card. The push sits alongside the same week's Adani Defence-IRRPL AK-203 ammunition pact and the Tata Boeing 400th Apache fuselage milestone, all pointing to deepening indigenisation.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a three-day official visit to Sri Lanka from 8-10 September 2026 - the first visit by an Indian Defence Minister in nearly 40 years. He called on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and met Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya. The two sides signed three MoUs, covering air-defence capability, military education and youth cooperation; under a government grant India will upgrade six 40-mm L70 anti-aircraft guns for the Sri Lankan Air Force, while the others link the two countries' National Defence Colleges and NCCs. The visit followed the Colombo Security Conclave table-top exercise at the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam.

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh released the 'RAKSHA' document on defence diplomacy in New Delhi on 3 September 2026, setting out India's vision for strengthening defence ties over the next 10 years. Its core pillars are Strategic Partnerships, Capacity Building, Indigenous Exports and Maritime Security, including consolidating India's role in the Indian Ocean Region as a Net Security Provider and First Responder. The framework shifts India from reactive to proactive defence diplomacy, aligning military engagement with foreign policy and complementing Make in India in reducing import dependence. Chief of the Army Staff General Dhiraj Seth and Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh attended the release.

China flight-tested its GJ-21 stealth unmanned aerial vehicle in August 2026 as the Type 076 amphibious assault ship 'Sichuan' entered the final phase of sea trials, signalling a shift toward carrier-based unmanned combat aviation. The GJ-21 is the naval variant of the GJ-11 stealth flying-wing drone, with test flights reported over Huludao in Liaoning province. The Sichuan displaces more than 40,000 tonnes and has a flight deck about 250 metres long and 62 metres wide. It is the world's first amphibious assault ship fitted with an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), letting it launch fixed-wing aircraft and stealth combat drones - effectively a "drone carrier".

The Border Security Force (BSF), in a joint operation with Punjab Police on the night of 14-15 September 2026, seized 210 kg of heroin with an estimated street value of Rs 1,470 crore near the International Border in Amritsar district, Punjab. It ranks among the largest single-consignment narcotics recoveries on the India-Pakistan border in 2026. Punjab's border belt remains a principal entry route for heroin originating in the Golden Crescent - Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan - with consignments increasingly pushed across by drones and tunnels. Narcotics offences are prosecuted under the NDPS Act, 1985, with the Narcotics Control Bureau as nodal agency under the Home Ministry.

Air Vice Marshal Shakti Sharma became the first woman officer from the non-medical stream of the Indian Defence Forces to attain two-star rank, assuming charge as Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Education) at Air Headquarters, New Delhi, on 1 September 2026. Commissioned into the IAF Education Branch on 18 June 1994, she has over 30 years of service across training establishments, field stations, command headquarters and Air Headquarters. She spearheaded the IAF Chairs of Excellence at IIT Kanpur and Savitribai Phule Pune University, and became the first woman from the Tri-Services to command a Sainik School, at Kapurthala, Punjab. Her promotion widens leadership pathways for women in the services.