Defence News Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The university was approved for Haryana.

In 2010 the Union Cabinet approved the Indian National Defence University, to be set up at Binola in Gurgaon district, Haryana, as the country's first university for higher defence and strategic studies.

Punjab, Delhi and Tamil Nadu have defence training institutions, such as the National Defence College in Delhi and the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington in Tamil Nadu, but the defence university was sited in Haryana.

Answer: C

SAHAYAK-NG is an air droppable container.

SAHAYAK-NG is India's first indigenously designed and developed GPS-aided air droppable container. It was developed by the DRDO with the Indian Navy and was first trial dropped from an IL-38SD aircraft off the coast of Goa in January 2021. It lets the Navy drop up to about 50 kg of critical engineering stores and supplies to ships far out at sea, without bringing them close to the coast.

It is not a missile, a fighter jet or an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Answer: C

The Rafale aircraft were acquired from France.

The Rafale is a twin-engine multirole fighter built by the French company Dassault Aviation. India bought 36 of them under an inter-governmental agreement with France signed in 2016, and the first five arrived in July 2020.

The USA, Germany and Russia make other combat aircraft, such as the F-16, the Eurofighter (in partnership) and the Sukhoi, but not the Rafale.

Answer: B

The codename was Operation Abhyaas.

On 7 May 2025 the Ministry of Home Affairs held a nationwide civil defence mock drill, Operation Abhyaas (Hindi for 'practice'), in districts across the country. It rehearsed air-raid sirens, blackouts, evacuation and the response of civil defence volunteers.

Operation Raksha, Operation Suraksha and Operation Agni were not the names of this drill.

Answer: A

The Bavar-373 system was unveiled by Iran.

In August 2019 Iran unveiled the Bavar-373, its home-built long-range surface-to-air missile defence system, presented as its answer to the Russian S-300. The name means 'belief'.

France, China and Russia have their own air-defence systems, such as the Russian S-400 and the Chinese HQ-9, but the Bavar-373 is Iranian.

Answer: A

The operation was Operation Sankalp.

In June 2019, after attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, the Indian Navy launched Operation Sankalp, deploying warships to escort and protect Indian-flagged merchant vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.

'Operation Gulf Peace' and 'Operation Maritime' are not Indian Navy operations, and 'Sagar' is the name of India's wider maritime policy, not of this operation.

Answer: C

Konkan is held between India and the UK.

Konkan is the annual bilateral naval exercise of the Indian Navy and the Royal Navy, held since 2004, alternately in Indian and British waters.

India's naval exercise with Russia is INDRA, with Japan JIMEX, and New Zealand has no exercise named Konkan.

Bilateral exercises like Konkan let two navies practise operating together at sea, in areas such as anti-submarine warfare, air defence and boarding operations.

Answer: C

PINAKA is a Multibarrel Rocket Launch (MBRL) system.

Pinaka, named after the bow of Shiva, is a multi-barrel rocket launcher developed by DRDO for the Indian Army. A battery of launchers can fire salvos of rockets over ranges of tens of kilometres, and longer-range guided versions have since been developed.

It is not naval at all. India's anti-submarine torpedoes include Varunastra, its aircraft carriers are the Vikramaditya and Vikrant, and its frigates belong to classes such as the Talwar and Shivalik; none is called Pinaka.

Answer: A

NASAMS II is being procured from the United States.

The National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System was developed by Norway's Kongsberg with the American firm Raytheon, and India's purchase was negotiated with the US government. It was intended to strengthen the air defence of the National Capital Region.

Russia is the source of India's S-400 air defence system, Israel of the Barak missiles, and Japan does not sell such systems to India, so none of them supplies NASAMS.

Answer: D

The PrSM was developed by the USA.

The Precision Strike Missile is a surface-to-surface ballistic missile built by Lockheed Martin for the US Army to replace the older ATACMS, and is fired from HIMARS and M270 launchers. Its first combat use came in March 2026, when US forces fired it at Iranian military targets in the US-Iran war that began in February 2026.

Russia, Iran and Israel each have their own missiles, but none of them developed the PrSM.