This weekend was a busy one in the sky over Jodhpur, with nothing held back about it. The second edition of the exercise Tarang Shakti commenced with the landing of American F-35 stealth jets, French Rafales flown from the other side of the planet, and Emirati F-16s at Air Force Station Jodhpur, to see over forty countries participate until October 12. This is the time when for an air force that has been developing bilateral relationships one-by-one for decades, they are being cashed in at the same time, on one runway.

This edition is not only bigger than the last, which took place in 2024 in Sulur and Jodhpur, but the equipment as well. The United States will be sending two to three F-35 Lightning IIs and Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, Vice Chief of Air Staff, confirmed that this would be the first time the Indian Air Force would be able to exercise with the jet, instead of witnessing them fly past during an air show. That's real distinction and not a mere, trivial thing. The performance of a stealth fighter is an eye-catching event; the exercise against its radar signature, the sensor fusion and the networked battle picture is an intelligence exercise and the entire region will be reading into what India learns from the exercise.

France came a day early, arriving as part of what its air force is calling Mission Pegase, which is a long-range deployment "proof of the efforts of my country to arrive on time," said Deputy Commander Julien Sabene. In total, seven Rafale jets are expected to come from Paris, along with the Indian Air Force's Rafale and Sukhoi-30 warplanes, airborne early warning aircraft, transport planes and air-to-air refuelling tankers. It was not all a show and the Indian Air Force warmly welcomed the arriving contingents with a kind welcome that they usually give to their own family members on social media. Tarang Shakti has come on the back of a two-nation drill with Japan, Veer Guardian, that took place in the same base a week earlier giving Jodhpur the feel of being a rolling diplomatic hotspot for much of this month.

Remove airshow shine and appears more like a hedging approach. The Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, the fifth generation fighter being developed by India is still years away from its maiden flight, slated for sometime in 2027-28, but widely believed to be further delayed and its induction into service still may not be before the mid-2030s. In the meantime, the neighbourhood has developed. The J-20 has already been brought into service in some numbers by China and Pakistan is testing sixth generation aircraft, both from Beijing and Ankara.

Then, last year, when Donald Trump offered India the F-35 on a platter of platters during Narendra Modi's visit to Washington, New Delhi demurred politely and, by all reporting since, hesitantly, not willing to do business with an imported jet programme that it has dabbled in for several years, and which it has invested political capital and roughly fifteen thousand crore rupees of development money in. In that regard, it is cheaper to train with the F-35, rather than purchase it, to fill the knowledge gap as the indigenous project catches up.

There's also a more difficult economic narrative that underlies the formation flying. India's defence exports ended the previous fiscal year at an all-time high of nearly thirty-eight and a half thousand crore rupees, or four and a half billion dollars, an increase of over sixty percent from the previous year and the sale of arms to around eighty countries. In fact the contribution of the private industry is now past forty percent of that production for the first time, a development that is hard to imagine a decade ago when India was mainly known as one of the world's largest arms buyers and not a seller.

That reputation will be put to the test in exercises such as this one in front of the customers that really matter. The UAE officer who observed the performance of Indian Sukhois in an enemy fighter is in the middle of market research rather than military training and Indian authorities are aware of the fact.That growth curve is no fluke of one good year. It ensures that almost all of the expenditure on indigenous content at the Defence Acquisitions is being phased up from 50 to 60 per cent in priority categories and that a national target of fifty thousand crore rupees for indigenous content export is being met by the industry. In other words, the next time, New Delhi will not be walking as a host into rooms like Jodhpur, it will be as a vendor.

This too doesn't take place in isolation, however. Whatever the details of Operation Sindoor earlier this year, the experience has already influenced the way planners in India discuss the integration of indigenous systems into operations and this experience is working its way into what New Delhi expects from its foreign partners at such exercises as this one.

The simultaneous interoperability with a NATO standard F-35, an Australian or Greek support squadron and a UAE F-16 Fleet is as much an operating language for a divided world as it is a dog fight exercise. Interestingly, Russia is not invited, a fact that provides more insight into where India's air force believes its future alliances lie.