- General Awareness
- History, sports, geography, environment, civics, basic science, defence, art, culture, current affairs, politics and other subjects of contemporary importance. The defence-related content is a consistent seam — services, ranks, aircraft, exercises and organisational structure — and it is not covered by general competitive-exam material.
- Verbal Ability in English
- Comprehension, error detection, sentence completion, synonyms and antonyms, and testing of vocabulary. Straightforward in level and highly learnable, which makes it a reliable source of marks.
- Numerical Ability
- Decimal fractions, simplification, average, profit and loss, percentage, ratio and proportion, simple interest, and time and work, along with time and distance covering trains, boats and streams. Pitched at approximately matriculation level — the least demanding numerical section among officer entry examinations.
- Reasoning and Military Aptitude Test
- Verbal skills and spatial ability, covering analogies, pattern completion, figure classification, embedded figures, rotated blocks, hidden figures and similar visual reasoning. The spatial component is heavier than in most competitive exams and rewards specific practice.
The spatial reasoning within the military aptitude section is worth singling out. Rotated blocks, embedded figures and pattern completion appear far more heavily here than in SSC or banking papers, and candidates who have prepared only through verbal reasoning practice find this section slower than expected. It responds very well to targeted repetition.
The spatial component is the part of this syllabus that most rewards preparation, precisely because it is the part most competitive preparation does not build. A candidate who has practised banking or SSC reasoning has met analogies and series thoroughly and rotated three-dimensional figures barely at all — and that is a skill that improves quickly with volume and slowly with theory.
No separate technical paper any more
Older guides describe an Engineering Knowledge Test for Ground Duty (Technical) candidates. The AFCAT 01/2026 and 02/2026 notifications do not include it: every branch sits the same 100-question paper, and engineers may alternatively be shortlisted on a valid GATE score. Ignore EKT material unless a future notification brings the paper back.
