China’s Navy Conducts ‘Attack Exercise’ in South China Sea

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy recently debuted a new bomber as it carried out an “attack exercise” in the South China Sea, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced Thursday.

“New warplanes affiliated with the PLA Navy, including H-6G and H-6J bombers, recently conducted intensive round-the-clock drills in the South China Sea,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece Global Times reported Thursday. The specific location of the exercises was not disclosed.

“This is the first time the Chinese military has officially revealed the H-6J bomber,” the newspaper revealed.

“During the drills, the warplanes under the PLA Southern Theater Command Navy Aviation Force successfully completed training exercises including takeoff and landing in daytime and nighttime, long-distance strike and attacks on surface targets,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang said at a regularly scheduled press conference on Thursday.

Ren claimed the attack drills were “a routine arrangement in the annual schedule” and that they “contributed to the pilots’ technique and tactical ability, as well as the troops’ all-weather combat capabilities.”

The Global Times quoted unnamed “military experts” who said that “the training subjects [were] very combat-oriented,” demonstrating that the H-6J, which the PLA revealed publicly for the first time in the drills, “already has the capability to conduct all-weather combat missions and is also capable of accurately attacking moving maritime targets.”

Commercial satellite imagery shows that “four H-6Js were first spotted in a PLA Naval base” in Southern China’s Guangxi region “in September 2018,” the Global Times notes, citing Chinese media reports. Guangxi borders Vietnam and its coastline extends along the South China Sea.

According to the newspaper, a Chinese media report “said that the H-6J can carry seven YJ-12 supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, with six under the wings and one in the weapon bay. The H-6J’s weapon capacity is about twice that of the H-6G, with 50 percent farther combat radius to about 3,500 kilometers [2,175 miles].”

Wang Ya’nan, described by the Global Times as a “Chinese aviation industry expert and chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine,” told the newspaper on Thursday that “the [Chinese] Defense Ministry introduced the H-6 bombers’ exercises in detail” in the recent attack drills to demonstrate “China’s capabilities in safeguarding its national sovereignty and rights.”

Last week, Chinese media reported that a PLA Navy brigade based in South China’s Hainan Province held “live-fire maritime target attack drills” in an unspecified location in the South China Sea from July 15-17. The drills came in response to U.S. Navy exercises in the disputed waters on July 16, which involved two U.S. aircraft carriers, the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan. The two aircraft carriers began operating in the region on July 4, when the U.S. held its first dual-carrier drill in the South China Sea in at least four years amid rising tension with Beijing for its illegal encroachment on the international waters.