India and Russia later this year will conduct their first tri-service military exercise, an upgrade that should be facilitated by the similarity of many of the weapons they use.

The tri-service exercise will also retain the name INDRA after the INDRA joint naval exercise held every two years since 2003 and involving only the navies of both nations.

INDRA 2017 will be the first tri-service military exercise between India and another country.

"There will be no separate Army, Navy Air Force INDRA exercises with Russia. It has been agreed to have them in a tri-service format," said a senior source in India's Ministry of Defense.

"This will be an opportunity for India to synergize jointness between its services and see how other countries function jointly."

INDRA 2017 will take place either in October and November. The venue will be the Russian port city of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. Vladivostok is the headquarters of Russia's Pacific Fleet, which is responsible for operations in the Indian Ocean.

Indian defense ministry officials noted the commonalities in equipment used by the Indian and Russian armed forces. A sizeable part of the weapons used by the Indian Armed Forces were produced in the former Soviet Union and its successor, Russia.

"For instance advantage with Russia is aircraft can be shared. They need not be taken from here," according to a defense ministry source.

Russia remains India's largest supplier of military weapons and equipment, according to Russian state-owned media.

From 2013 to 2015, Russian exported over $5 billion in weapons and equipment to India compared to the United States, which provided arms worth $4.4 billion. From 2009 to 2013, India and Russia signed defense deals worth an estimated $30 billion.

From 2013 to 2015, India and Russia signed 18 arms purchase contracts. Russian arms and equipment comprised some 75 percent of all of India's weapons imports from 2004 to 2014.

The Indian Navy and the Russian Navy held their sixth INDRA joint naval exercise from Dec. 14 to 21, 2016 at the Bay of Bengal off the southeastern city of Visakhapatnam, headquarters of the Indian Navy's Eastern Naval Command, its most powerful naval command.

The main goal of the INDRA exercises is to boost cooperation and interoperability between the Russian Navy and the Indian Navy.