Exercise Tiger Triumph 2026 Opens at Visakhapatnam

The opening ceremony of the 5th edition of Exercise Tiger Triumph 2026 was held at the Maritime Warfare Centre (MWC), Visakhapatnam, on 2 November 2026, and the Ministry of Defence announced it the following day. Tiger Triumph is the bilateral tri-service Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) exercise between India and the United States, meaning that all three Services of each country take part and the drills centre on relief work after a disaster rather than on combat.

A tabletop exercise this year

This edition is being run as a Tabletop Exercise (TTX). A tabletop exercise is a discussion-based drill: officers work through a disaster scenario around a planning table instead of putting ships, aircraft and troops into the field. The aim is to sharpen coordination, joint planning and interoperability between the armed forces of the two countries when a relief operation has to be mounted on a large scale, and to work out how Combined Joint All-Domain Operations would be planned and run.

Who presided

• Rear Admiral Vishal Bishnoi, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet, from the Indian side.
• Rear Admiral Joaquin J Martinez de Pinillos, Vice Commander, US Pacific Fleet, from the American side.

Who is taking part

The Indian contingent brings together specialists from every domain of maritime operations in the Indian Navy, ground troops of the Indian Army, representatives from various units of the Indian Air Force, and Special Forces personnel drawn from all three Services. A notable first: a team from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) is taking part for the first time in this 5th edition, which brings a dedicated civil disaster-response agency into a military HADR drill.

The United States Joint Force has sent specialists from its Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy, along with experts in space, cyber, medical work and explosive ordnance disposal. The Ministry of Defence described the exercise as a reflection of the growing closeness of Indian and American strategic maritime interests and of the deepening defence partnership between the two countries.