New Delhi, Feb 11 (UNI) Months after a Tejas Mk-1A light combat aircraft was involved in a fatal crash during a low-level aerobatic display at the Dubai Air Show last year, the indigenously developed fighter jet is set to feature prominently in the Indian Air Force’s upcoming Exercise Vayu Shakti 2026.
The large-scale firepower demonstration is scheduled to be held on February 27 at the Pokharan field firing range near Jaisalmer in Rajasthan.
Built by state-run aerospace major Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the Tejas Mk-1A will participate in aerial drills and combat demonstrations during the exercise, along with Rafale, Su-30, MiG-29, Jaguar, Mirage-2000, Apache, LCH Prachand, and ALH. Over 120 assets, including fighter jets, helicopters and transport aircraft will be part of the demonstration.
The exercise, however, will not be featuring “long-distance targeting”. In a curtain raiser held in the national capital on Wednesday, Vice Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor said that the firepower demonstration assumes (a) different connotation as this is taking place after last year’s Operation Sindoor.
Speaking about whether the drill will carry any strategic message for India’s neighbour on the western front, the Kapoor said that the IAF will do their demonstration. “What message will go out to anyone? It is up to you to decide,” he said.
“Message from Op Sindoor was clear. It was clear even before we took the first sortie up. It was that terrorism will not be tolerated and every act of terror conducted on our soil will be responded to and there will be a price to pay for the perpetrators. So that was the message from Sindoor,” he added further.
Speaking about Vayu Shakti 2026, the IAF Vice chief said that it will be showcasing glimpses of precise targeting. “A target will be earmarked, aircraft will drop their weapons and that target will be addressed and so the precise targeting will be on display on that day. There are certain reasons that those weapons, those long distance weapons because of various safety and security concerns with people sitting so close to the target, we will not undertake in the same profiles that we carried out in during Sindoor. But the effect on the ground will be visible to you right in front of your eyes,” he added.
Stating that Vayu Shakti is a exercise that IAF carries out in-house, Kapoor said, “We make rules for ourselves, we make terms of reference for ourselves and that is how we go about doing it and thereafter we get together and then we sit down and draw lessons, and the way going forward. So this is not an exercise. This is a demonstration and so no concept of Sudarshan Chakra as yet will be played in this. This is not an exercise for validation of any of those concepts,” he said.
