Chinese Navy holds rare live-fire drill in Indian Ocean

› The fleet carried out strikes against ‘enemy’ surface ships and completed transverse replenishment of fuel and drinking water during an exercise that lasted for several days. CHEN DENAN, chief of staff of the Chinese fleet

BEIJING: China’s navy has carried out a “live fire drill” in the Indian Ocean to improve fleet performance, state media reported on Friday, the latest exercise in a maritime region near India against the backdrop of the military stand off at Doklam near the Sikkim border.

The drill targeted “enemy” surface ships, the media report said.

The People’ s Liberation Army (PL A) has carried out a number of well-publicised drills in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and close to the Indian border since the standoff between border troops at Donglang or Doklam began in mid-June.

But the Indian Ocean man oeuvre is the first naval drill to be publicised by China during this period and could be seen as another signal of aggressive military posturing in a region where the Indian Navy has an influential presence.

Two of the PLA Navy’s frontline battle ships took part in the exercise that lasted several days. The location and the time of the exercise weren’t revealed in the report released by official Xinhua news agency on Friday.

“Chinese naval formation consisting of the destroyer Changchun, guided-missile frigate Jingzhou and supply vessel Chaohu conducted alive-fire drill in the waters of the western Indian Ocean,” the report said.

“The fleet carried out strikes against‘ enemy’ surface ships and completed transverse replenishment of fuel and drinking water during an exercise that lasted for several days. The drill is aimed at improving the ships’ performance under real combat circumstances,” Chen Denan, chief of staff of the Chinese fleet, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The report said the fleet is on a half-year friendship visit to Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania and has conducted joint exercises with the navies of 10 countries since it started its voyage on April 23.

Earlier this year, a Chinese fleet had conducted a similar livefire drill in the east Indian Ocean region to test combat capacity.

The latest Chinese drill follows the Malabar naval exercises held in the Indian Ocean by the navies of India, the US and Japan.