An IGI Airport mock exercise brought together CISF, Delhi Police, the National Security Guard, Delhi Fire Service and half a dozen other stakeholder agencies on Tuesday, testing how fast they could move together in a simulated terrorist attack scenario.

The Joint Counter Terrorist Mock Exercise was staged at the Old ATC building near Terminal 2 of Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Along with CISF and Delhi Police, the drill drew in the NSG, DFS, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting teams, RAXA and Delhi International Airport Limited, nine agencies working a single scenario end to end.

What the IGI Airport mock exercise was built to test

CISF said the drill was built around four goals: validating real-time crisis response, strengthening inter-agency coordination, ensuring timely mobilisation and sharpening preparedness against emerging security threats.

Coordination across that many uniforms and command chains is usually the harder half of any counter terror response, more than the assault phase itself, and it sits alongside the force's wider counter-drone and threat-response training pipeline for personnel across its airport units.

Images released by CISF showed NSG commandos moving through cover in tactical gear, rifles raised, alongside CISF and paramilitary personnel gathered for a briefing on the airport tarmac. Ambulances and a mobile intensive care van were staged nearby, a detail that points to the exercise folding in casualty response alongside the assault and containment phases of the drill.


Why NSG and Delhi Police extend the exercise beyond aviation regulators

CISF is the designated force guarding India's civil airports, working under the regulatory writ of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

A counter terrorist scenario sits outside what an aviation security force alone is built to close out on its own. That is where NSG's Black Cat commandos and Delhi Police come in, bringing the assault and law enforcement capability a hijack or terrorist takeover scenario would actually require, capability CISF does not carry organically.

ARFF, DFS and RAXA cover the airport's own emergency response layer

ARFF is the airport's in-house fire and rescue cover, mandated for every civil airport regardless of city fire services. DFS supplies the wider municipal backup, and RAXA, the private security firm DIAL contracts for terminal access control, rounds out the layer.

A recurring test at India's busiest airport

IGI Airport carries the country's heaviest passenger and aircraft movement load. Exercises like this one run often enough that most travellers never notice one is underway.

CISF has run comparable drills elsewhere, including an anti hijacking mock exercise at Chennai airport that pulled in the IAF, Navy and Coast Guard alongside CISF and the local police, and a counter drone and vital area training track built for the CISF units guarding airports in the Northeast. Tuesday's IGI Airport mock exercise sits in that same recurring calendar, scaled up for the agency count a national capital hub demands.

CISF tagged the aviation ministry and NSG in its announcement

CISF flagged the exercise on its official handle, tagging the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the NSG alongside its own Airport Sector account, and filed the update under the hashtags #MockDrill and #AviationSecurity.

Photographs released with the announcement showed NSG operators taking cover in dense foliage near the drill site, weapons raised, the kind of perimeter infiltration posture the force rehearses for a live containment scenario, with a second frame showing the team moving in formation past parked vehicles at Old ATC.