Chinese and Russian navies conducted a nine-hour-long joint anti-submarine drill in the Yellow Sea in east China on Friday during China-Russia "Joint Sea-2019" military exercise.
The joint exercise ran from April 29 to May 4, focusing on joint sea defense. In the stage of searching submarines, the Russian cruiser Varyag served as the command ship. Upon getting the order, one Chinese and two Russian patrol aircraft were dispatched to the areas with suspected "enemy" submarines. Meanwhile, four Chinese and four Russian vessels sailed to the designated sea area.
Anti-submarine is a difficult task because it's hard to find the position of the submarines. In the drill, the two navies took different measures to search the targets.
"Joint anti-submarine has always been a key subject for the drills of Chinese and Russian navies. There is something new this year, for example, we use fixed-wing planes to search and attack the submarines for the first time. Besides, we apply more advanced equipment, like towed sonar, to search the target, which can search at a longer distance," said Zhang Xuelun, chief of the first formation of anti-submarine operation in the defense side, usually called "Red side".
After ascertaining the location of the "enemy" submarines, usually called "Blue side", the Red side launched the attack immediately, meaning the drill entered the rocket-propelled depth-charge stage, which was commanded by Chinese destroyer Harbin.
Buoy targets were used to simulate the enemy submarines and the vessels of the Red side successfully shot the two targets.
"Today's joint anti-submarine drill shows deep mutual trust between Chinese and Russian navies at the tactical level and it has involved many core capabilities, tactics and techniques of the two sides. It also marks that China and Russia have further deepened their cooperation," said Li Lie, commander of the first formation of Red side.
(Source: Reuters)