
Exercise Eager Lion 2026 began on 15 September 2026 at Fort Carson in Colorado. The two-week drill is being conducted by the United States Central Command and the Jordanian Armed Forces, with more than 200 military personnel from Jordan and the United States taking part.
India and Sri Lanka signed three defence Memoranda of Understanding in Colombo on 9 September 2026 during a meeting between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The agreements covered the upgrade of six 40mm L70 air defence guns, cooperation between the National Cadet Corps of both countries, and academic exchange between the National Defence Colleges of India and Sri Lanka.
INS Udaygiri, an indigenously built multi-role stealth frigate of the Indian Navy, arrived at Colombo Port, Sri Lanka, on 8 September 2026 for a three-day operational turnaround. The visit coincided with the official visit of Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Colombo from 8 to 10 September 2026.
Stanzin Tsangyang was commissioned into the Indian Army on 5 September 2026 at the Officers Training Academy in Chennai. She became the first woman officer from the Zanskar region of Ladakh and was part of a batch of 342 cadets who completed training at the academy.
Indian Naval Ship INS Mysore, a Delhi-class guided-missile destroyer of the Indian Navy, reached Lumut Naval Base in Malaysia on 9 September 2026 for Exercise Samudra Laksamana 4/26. The bilateral naval drill involves the Royal Malaysian Navy and is part of India-Malaysia maritime engagement in the Indian Ocean region.
The United States Navy selected the VAMPIRE counter-unmanned system for coastal and littoral defence on 8 September 2026. VAMPIRE stands for Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment and is developed by L3Harris Technologies, a defence company headquartered in Melbourne, Florida.
The 22nd edition of Yudh Abhyas, the annual India-US bilateral military exercise, is scheduled from 9 September to 28 September 2026. The exercise is being conducted in a two-theatre format across Bikaner in Rajasthan and Auli in Uttarakhand.
India’s nuclear arsenal has been estimated at 190 warheads in 2026 by two major international assessments, the Federation of American Scientists and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Both assessments placed India’s stockpile at the same figure, with SIPRI estimating 190 warheads as of January 2026 and FAS giving a similar count in its 2026 study.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) will organise Dronathon-2026 at the Pokhran range in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, from 14 September to 16 September 2026. The three-day military aviation event will focus on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (CUAS) for defence applications.
The Indian Air Force and the Japan Air Self-Defence Force will conduct Veer Guardian-2026, a bilateral air defence exercise, at Air Force Station Jodhpur in Rajasthan. The 14-day exercise is scheduled from 9 September to 22 September 2026, and it is the second edition of the exercise after the inaugural edition in Japan in 2023.
Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) emerged as the lowest bidder, or L1, in the Ministry of Defence competition for the Armoured Fighting Vehicle-Indian Light Tank (AFV-ILT) programme under Project Zorawar. The contract value is about ₹20,000 crore, and the project involves the development of a 25-tonne class light tank for the Indian Army.
The term “BrahMos Belt” refers to a proposed network of coastal supersonic cruise missile deployments by Southeast Asian states around the South China Sea. The BrahMos missile is a joint India-Russia weapon system, and its shore-based variant has been supplied to the Philippines under a contract valued at $375 million.