Russian-Chinese Naval Exercise Starts in Tsunami Zone

The Russians and Chinese have commenced a joint naval exercise in the Pacific Far East area. While the large exercise was getting underway, on July 30, it also encountered one of recent history’s largest undersea earthquakes.

Exercise Maritime Interdiction 2025 officially starts today, August 1, and is scheduled to conclude on August 5. A Russian Pacific Fleet press statement suggested that exercise serials will include coastal operations, search and rescue, anti-submarine, air defense, and combined fire support operations involving the use of the Pacific Fleet’s training ranges. Diesel-electric vessels and aircraft from both nations will take part in the exercise, to be directed from the Pacific Fleet’s headquarters in Vladivostok. The exercise will start with a command post phase in Vladivostok. The exercise follows on from a global exercise held last week by the Russian Navy involving over 150 ships and 15,000 personnel across the Pacific, Arctic, Baltic, and Caspian seas.

The lead Russian ship on Exercise Maritime Interdiction 2025 will be the Udaloy Class anti-submarine destroyer Admiral Tributs (D564), while the Type 052D destroyer CNS Shaoxing (D134) will lead the Chinese contingent.

The sheltered Russian submarine bases (Google Earth/CJRC)

The Russian submarine bases due west of the earthquake epicentre (Google Earth/CJRC)

Seen in the East China Sea heading towards the exercise area by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) on July 24 was the PLA Navy’s Type 926 Dakai Class submarine rescue vessel CNS Xihu (841). CNS Xihu is believed to be on its first operational deployment since being launched. The Xihu was following in the wake of a lead group of ships also spotted by the JMSDF made up of CNS Shaoxing and fleet oiler CNS Qiandaohu (886), as well as Type 052D destroyer CNS Urumqi (118), which last year was the lead vessel in the 45th Naval Escort Group deployed to Djibouti. These movements had been preceded by increased maritime surveillance of the Sea of Japan area by Russian Ilyushin IL-20M patrol aircraft.

The launch of the exercise as planned suggests that the Pacific Fleet has not been seriously impacted by the undersea earthquake on July 30. The US Geological Survey measured the quake as being of 8.8 MMS magnitude, occurring at a depth of 12.86 miles and 80 miles southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The tsunami generated by the earthquake appears to have manifested as a series of flood surges rather than by massive waves. Flooding of the fishing village of Severo-Kurilisk, some 195 miles away on the Kamchatka peninsula, was seen in social media. But there appears to have been little damage suffered by the two important Russian nuclear and ballistic missile submarine bases at Rybachiy and Vilyuchinsk, which are only about 65 miles from the epicenter, save for damage to a pier at Rybachiy evident in radar imagery.

Given the submarine focus of Exercise Maritime Interdiction 2025, vessels from the two bases are likely to be involved in sea phases of the exercise. But both bases may have been protected by their sheltered location within the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy bay, to which there is only a narrow sea opening. The Vladivostok area, home to the Pacific Fleet headquarters, some 1,280 miles from the epicenter, was effectively screened by the land mass of the Japanese islands.