Exercise Udara Shakti 2026 has brought the Indian Air Force and the Royal Malaysian Air Force together once more, this time at Subang Airbase on the edge of Kuala Lumpur, where air warriors from the two services have opened a round of joint field training and Subject Matter Expert exchanges. The Indian Air Force announced the engagement on Wednesday, setting out a programme built around operational learning, the exchange of best practices and closer interoperability between the two air arms.

India and Malaysia have done this before, and the reason they can comes down to a single aircraft type.

Exercise Udara Shakti 2026 returns to Subang

Subang is where the two air forces first flew together. In 2018 an IAF contingent staged through the base on its way home from Australia and put up a short bilateral package with its Malaysian hosts. The editions that followed, in 2022 and 2024, moved north to Kuantan on the peninsula's east coast. This year the exercise has come back to Subang, a Royal Malaysian Air Force station that today houses the service's A400M transport squadron and lies close to the Malaysian capital.

The Indian Air Force has framed this edition around people rather than platforms, with field training and expert exchange at its centre.


A partnership built on the Su-30

Both air forces operate the Sukhoi Su-30. India flies the Su-30MKI, assembled in Nashik by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited under licence from Russia, and it is the type on which the IAF has built the core of its air dominance fleet. Malaysia flies the Su-30MKM, a closely related variant it bought directly from Russia. The two jets share an airframe, an engine family and much of their handling, which is what makes a joint exercise between the two forces worth the effort at all.

India is the largest operator of the Su-30 outside Russia.

That common fleet gives New Delhi something to offer beyond a training slot. The IAF's own drive to sustain and upgrade its Sukhois at home, part of the wider indigenisation push the air staff has set out, has left it with a depth of experience on the type that few other operators can match.

From training team to training partner

The link runs further back than a shared supplier. Between 2008 and 2010 an Indian Air Force training team was based in Malaysia to bring RMAF crews onto the Su-30MKM as the type entered Malaysian service. The Subject Matter Expert exchanges now written into the exercise are, in one reading, the mature form of that early arrangement, with instruction moving both ways rather than in one direction.

The record of the series

Each edition has left a clear account. The 2022 exercise at Kuantan drew four Su-30MKI fighters from the IAF's No. 20 Squadron, flown out alongside a C-17 Globemaster while the contingent was transiting home from Australia. In 2024, again at Kuantan and held from 5 to 9 August, the IAF sent seven Su-30MKI aircraft under Group Captain Ajay Rathi, and the two forces ran a cross-cockpit sortie in which Indian and Malaysian pilots flew each other's jets. That deployment, which the Ministry of Defence recorded on its return, turned on air combat missions and a parallel exchange between the maintenance crews of both fleets.

The Australian connection is not incidental.

Twice now the Malaysian exercise has sat at one end of the same overseas deployment that carries the IAF to Exercise Pitch Black in the Northern Territory, letting one ferry across the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea do double duty. The Indian Air Force has treated the two as complementary, one a large multinational war game, the other a focused bilateral built on a shared jet.

Where Malaysia sits in India's regional map

Beyond the flight line, Exercise Udara Shakti 2026 is one strand of a defence relationship that has widened steadily. The two countries also run Harimau Shakti, a joint army exercise, and their engagement now reaches into equipment. Malaysia has assessed Indian systems for its own forces, including the BrahMos cruise missile for its ships and its Sukhois, part of India's expanding defence engagement across Southeast Asia. For New Delhi, a Malaysian Sukhoi fleet flying well into the next decade is both a partner to train with and a potential customer for the sustainment and upgrade work Indian industry is positioning itself to sell.

Air warriors from both forces will work through the field training and the expert exchange over the days the exercise runs at Subang.