Our colleagues from Eastpendulum are reporting that the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) conducted large scale naval drills in the South China Sea. The naval exercise involved close to 100 vessels, submarine, aircraft from the PLAN air force and coastal defense (land based) units during 4 days (between July 7 and 11, 2016).
Based on the pictures and videos of the exercise released by the PLAN, several vessels and systems can be identified:
» Destroyers: Type 052C Lanzhou (hull number 170), Type 052D Hefei (174), Type 052B Guangzhou (168) Type 051C Shenyang (115) and Sovremenyy-class destroyers Ningbo (139).
» Type 054A Frigates Hengyang (568), Huangshan (570), Yuncheng (571), Sanya (574) and Yueyang (575)
» Type 056 Corvettes Luzhou (592), Chaozhou (595) and Huizhou (596) and Type 056A Corvette Suqian (504)
» Type 039 and Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines (SSK)
» J-10AH, J-11BH, JH-7A and Su-30MKK fighters as well as H-6G bombers
» HQ-9 medium-to-long range air defense missile system
» YJ-62 coastal defence units
» The new YJ-12 supersonic anti-ship cruise missile launched from an H-6G
[...]
According to an official PLAN statement, the objective of this large scale exercise was to evaluate the integrated capability of the various units of the Chinese navy in case of a local conflict. The presence of the Commander of the Chinese navy, Admiral Wu Shengli, and officials of the General Staff throughout the maneuvers demonstrates the importance of this naval exercise.