Exercise KONKAN-26 Concludes off Plymouth with INS Trishul

The Indian Navy and Britain’s Royal Navy wound up KONKAN-26, their bilateral maritime exercise, in the waters off Plymouth in the United Kingdom. The Ministry of Defence said the drill was held from 8 to 15 October 2026 and closed on the last of those days. Over that week the two fleets worked side by side across a wide spread of professional and operational areas at sea.

Ships that took part

India was represented by the stealth frigate INS Trishul. The host navy put out HMS Sutherland, a Duke-class frigate built for anti-submarine warfare. Charge of running the exercise lay with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Operational Standards and Training organisation, shortened to FOST, which assesses warships of Britain and of visiting navies.

What the sea phase covered

The sea phase was the busiest stretch of the programme. It ran for four days, from 12 to 15 October 2026, and packed in serial after serial:

• Advanced seamanship manoeuvres, with ships handled at close quarters
• Joint tactical exercises and shared communication procedures
• Asymmetric warfare drills against surface threats such as small, fast attack craft
• Anti-submarine warfare serials and weapon firings in a multi-threat setting

Why the drill matters

Every serial was framed to lift interoperability, that is, the ability of warships belonging to two different navies to pass information to each other, read one tactical picture and fight as a single force. Officers of the two services traded professional know-how and the best practices followed in their own fleets. The outcome, the ministry said, is a firmer footing for the two navies to operate together through complicated situations at sea, and one more step in a maritime partnership the two countries have kept up for years. KONKAN is the name of the long-running naval series the two navies hold together, and the suffix on this edition stands for the year in which it was staged. Both ships are frigates, the mid-sized warship class navies lean on for escort work and submarine hunting, which let the two crews compare drills on near-equal platforms.