Rafales at Tarang Shakti became a reality on Friday, when four French Air and Space Force Rafale F4 fighters landed in Jodhpur, part of a deployment carrying roughly 300 aircrew, three A330 MRTT Phenix tankers and two A400M Atlas transport aircraft. The French contingent will fly through Exercise Tarang Shakti from 28 September to 12 October, operating out of Air Force Station Jodhpur alongside other visiting air forces.

A second French run at Rafales at Tarang Shakti

France flew into Tarang Shakti for the first time in 2024. Friday's arrival is its return, and this time the window is longer. Tarang Shakti 2026 has already drawn attention for bringing an American F-35 onto Indian soil for the first time, and the arrival of French Rafale F4s adds a second advanced type to an already crowded flightline. The exercise also puts French Rafales down next to the Indian Air Force's own Rafales, delivered from France between 2020 and 2022, at a time when talks continue on a larger follow-on Rafale order for the IAF. For an exercise built around interoperability, sharing a runway with a stealth fighter for two and a half weeks is an unusual, and useful, coincidence.

Two senior French officers are travelling to India alongside the deployment. Lt Gen Dominique Tardif, Vice Chief of the French Air and Space Force, and Maj Gen Julien Sabene, who heads the deployment, will hold discussions with Indian armed forces authorities during the visit.

The mission behind the Jodhpur stopover

The Rafale F4s arrived as part of Mission Pegase 26, France's long range air power projection exercise, now in its seventh edition since it began in 2018. France describes the wider mission in plain terms. It exists to show that the French Air and Space Force can move fighters, tankers and transports across huge distances at short notice, and defend French overseas territories if the need arises.

The full mission runs from 8 September to 15 October. It started in the Arctic and will cover roughly 40,000 kilometres across nine stopovers by the time it ends, routed through the Near and Middle East, the Pacific, East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Jodhpur is one stop among several. Japan, South Korea and Indonesia also feature on the route, all three named by France as strategic aerospace partners, and France says it is using the mission to consolidate its network of air force support bases along the way.

The ambassador's framing

H.E. Mr Thierry Mathou, Ambassador of France to India, tied the exercise to a wider pattern of bilateral engagement. India, he said, is a core strategic defence partner of France.

"Regular participation in bilateral military exercises with India such as Varuna at sea, Garuda in the air and Shakti on land, as well as multinational exercises such as Tarang Shakti pave the way for greater Indo-French operational coordination and military interoperability," Mathou said. He added that France's involvement in Tarang Shakti reflects a shared commitment to regional and global security, and to upholding international law and freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific, where France describes itself as a resident power.

Why France calls itself a resident Indo-Pacific power

That description is not incidental. France holds overseas territories across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, from Reunion and Mayotte to French Polynesia and New Caledonia. That geography is part of why Mission Pegase reads as a projection exercise rather than a one-off visit. The Embassy of France in India points to Varuna, Garuda and Shakti as the standing bilateral exercises already anchoring the relationship, with Tarang Shakti now sitting alongside them.

The French Ministry of Armed Forces has previously described Mission Pegase as an instrument of French air power projection rather than a training exercise alone. This edition folds that projection role into an active multinational drill for the first time at Tarang Shakti. It gives Indian and French crews a shared, live airspace to fly in together rather than a bilateral slot run on the sidelines of a bigger exercise, which is a different kind of exposure for both air forces.

What comes next at Jodhpur

For now, the French contingent joins a flightline at Air Force Station Jodhpur that already includes American, Australian, German and other participating air forces under Indian Air Force hosting. Rafales at Tarang Shakti will keep flying through 12 October, alongside the American F-35s, before the exercise wraps up and Mission Pegase moves on. Tardif and Sabene's meetings with Indian counterparts are expected in the coming days, running alongside the flying programme, after which the French aircraft continue on their remaining Mission Pegase stopovers, next through the Pacific and East Asia, before eventually returning home having covered the mission's full 40,000 kilometre route.