PLA Navy to conduct training drills in western Pacific over Lunar New Year
PLA flotilla will spend Lunar New Year break performing training exercises that will demonstrate their 'readiness for mobilisation'
The People's Liberation Army Navy will conduct drills in the western Pacific Ocean during the Lunar New Year holiday after finishing a regular patrol mission in the South China Sea.
The reported yesterday that a North Sea Fleet blue-water training flotilla had passed through the Bashi Channel in the South China Sea, between Mavudis Island, the northernmost of the Philippines' Batanes Islands, and Orchid Island, on Thursday.
The flotilla was on its way to the western Pacific for another training mission. The front-page report failed to detail the kind of training drills that will be conducted.
But it said the flotilla had staged anti-submarine co-operation drills involving ships and aircraft, anti-piracy drills and other training near the Spratly and Paracel Islands before entering the western Pacific.
The PLA Navy has conducted series of high seas drills since Communist Party chief Xi Jinping , who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, called on the army to meet the goal of "being prepared for real combat and for victory".
Ni Lexiong , director of the sea power and defence policy research institute at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said yesterday the drills were aimed at proving the navy's mobilisation readiness.
They were also intended to reinforce the determination of the PLA to defend the nation's sovereignty.
