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Chinese and Russian naval forces launched joint military exercises this week that will include live-fire drills, in what U.S. intelligence officials have described as the latest sign of an expanding and troubling Beijing-Moscow military alliance.
Warships from the Chinese and Russian fleets set off from the southern port of Zhanjiang on Monday for what state media said will be three days of naval patrol exercises. China’s Defense Ministry said the naval patrol does not target “a third party” and is unrelated to current regional or international tensions.
The official Xinhua news agency, quoting a Chinese military source, said the drills will involve anchorage defense, joint reconnaissance and early warning, joint search and rescue, and joint air defense and missile defense.
Live-fire weapons drills will be conducted to test “results of previous discussions and exchanges,” between Chinese and Russian planners, the source said.
The exercises come days after the NATO summit in Washington where the Atlantic alliance’s leaders for the first time directly called Chinese activities a threat to security in the summit communique.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi denounced the NATO criticism of China as “groundless accusations,” warning the alliance to avoid “inciting confrontation” with Beijing over “different political systems and values.”
People’s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Zhang Xiaogang, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said on Friday that the “Exercise Joint Sea-2024” will be held in the waters and airspace near Zhanjiang, in Guangdong Province, and are designed “to demonstrate the resolve and capabilities of the two sides in jointly addressing maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability.”
Zhangjiang is located on the north end of the South China Sea that has been the focus of tensions between China and the Philippines, a U.S. ally, over a disputed shoal. The city is also the home to the naval forces of the PLA’s southern theater command.
Warships involved in the exercises include the Type 052D destroyer Nanning, Type 054A frigates Xianning and Dali, Type 903 supply ship Weishanhuand, along with maritime helicopters and marines. The Russian forces include the corvettes Gromkiy and Rezkiy and the oiler, Irkut oiler, China Central Television (CCTV) reported.
Also on Sunday, the ministry announced that a separate warship formation of Chinese and Russian vessels recently held the fourth joint maritime exercises in waters of the western and northern Pacific. Russian state media said the joint exercises are different from the South China Sea patrol.
The U.S. Coast Guard announced last week that a flotilla of Chinese warships had intruded into the U.S. exclusive economic zone in Alaska’s far western Aleutian Islands on July 6 and 7. A similar joint naval operation last year included Russian warships. This year four Chinese ships took part in what the PLA called a freedom of navigation operation near the Alaskan islands.
On the joint Chinese-Russian naval drills, Xinhua quoted officials from both navies as saying the exercises will be held in three phases — concentrating forces; planning within a harbor and then maritime drills at sea. The Russian-Chinese joint maneuvers coincide with major 29-nation U.S. Navy-led naval exercises underway near Hawaii known as Rimpac.
The growing military collaboration between two U.S. adversaries prompted a warning from Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in May. Gen. Kruse said the Pentagon military planners are reworking joint force planning for a potential conflict over Taiwan to include scenarios involving joint Chinese and Russian operations.
“Even if Russia and China as a military force are not interoperable, they would certainly be cooperative. And we would need to take that into account in force structure and planning,” he said.
The U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment made public in March stated that Beijing and Moscow for at least a decade “used high-profile, combined military activities to signal the strength of the China-Russia defense relationship.” The assessment noted, however, that the two militaries “have made only minor enhancements to interoperability in successive exercises.”
Gen. Kruse said two months ago that the military planning process addressing confrontations with both China and Russia is being updated to reflect “what the threat looks like.”
“And for the plans that you are probably most interested in, we are in the middle of that revision today,” he told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on May 2.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers that a potential conflict with China over Taiwan could result in a two-front conflict for the U.S. and its allies, with Russia taking coordinated action in Europe, something Gen. Kruse said is being considered in new U.S. military planning.
“I think from the Department of Defense perspective [a two-front war with China and Russia] would certainly be the case, and it just has to be taken into account whether or not we actually believe there would be two full-up fronts,” Gen. Kruse said.
Ms. Haines also said both China and Russia have detected pre-positioning capabilities that could be used in cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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