Eagles in the Air
| AUTHOR | Anushka Saxena |
| DATE | August 24, 2026 |
| CATEGORIES | China Defence Geostrategy |
As the China-Belarus “Eagle-Assault 2026” airborne training exercise gave over on August 23 at a PLA Air Force centre near Wuhan, the first flying day of the China–Egypt “Civilization Eagle-2026” exercise concluded at an Egyptian Air Base. Both aerial drills offered interesting takeaways to understand China’s approach to joint exercises with different militaries.
First, if one looks at the progress of the Egyptian exercise so far, which is only a year old, there is a significant enhancement in China’s offerings. For the inaugural edition of the exercise, which ran from April 17 to May 4, 2025, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) sent J-10C fighter jets, KJ-500 early warning aircraft and YY-20 tanker refuelling aircraft. This was the first time China had sent force packages to an African nation for joint training. This year, China sent its top-of-the-line, heavier, multi-role J-16 fighter, flying medium- and close-range engagements against Egyptian fighters. The 2025 drill covered air superiority, suppression of enemy air defences, battlefield search and rescue and mixed grouping. This year, as a PLAAF pilot, Shen Hao, told Chinese official media, the exercise is moving from “1-versus-1” and “2-versus-2” toward “systematic joint operations.” Arguably, Beijing is either attempting to export, or build credit for, the articulation of system-of-systems thinking in other, smaller militaries – it already has a track record of doing so for Pakistan, Thailand and Serbia.
Second, there’s the counter-terrorism exercises with Belarus, that have evolved in their own way. If one goes back two years, Eagle Assault-2024 was held near Brest. It was the first time China sent personnel for training to Belarus, following the 2018 iteration of the drill in Shandong. The 2026 round returns to Chinese soil as an airborne exercise, and involves basic training and coordinated training and comprehensive exercises, with “mixed-unit organisation model” and joint urban counter-terrorism as the scenario. Host rotation, phase structure and mixed units are useful markers to connote maturation of drills, and are similarly evident in China’s exercises with Russia.
Thirdly, both exercises are framed as counter-terrorism drills and both their goals are articulated as “jointly safeguarding regional peace and stability.” But the intensity of the airborne seizure-and-hold rehearsals, fighter engagements, and beyond-visual-range air combat are nothing short of conventional drills. Not to mention, the natures of the drill partners carries values of their own. Egypt is a country operating American F-16s and French Rafales. Maybe the PLAAF hopes to learn something there.
Belarus is Russia’s closest partner, and achieving China-Russia-Belarus military interoperability may be a useful goal for all three parties to work towards. The issue, of course, is that mixed-unit organisation across two airborne forces with different aircraft, drop procedures and command language isn’t the easiest, and China and Russia themselves face challenges on that front.
Nonetheless, each partner offers something valuable to Beijing, and China helps promote the military and security ambitions of a varied array of stakeholders, across regions, and with distinct levels of capabilities. With each iteration, the degree of incrementalism will show the PLA’s assessment of the value it derives and the partner’s absorption capabilities.