How Time Flies At Sea

Anushka Saxena

On 13 July 2026, a joint Chinese-Russian task force sailed from Qingdao and into the Pacific to begin a combined patrol. This marked the conclusion of the nearly-week-long exercise ‘Joint Sea-2026’, the latest iteration of a series that turns 14 this year. When Joint Sea began in 2012, the two fleets were still working out how to talk to one another over the radio. Today, they have transitioned to a joint effort at conducting “unscripted” manoeuvring tactics in air and sea.

What were some of the most interesting aspects of the 2026 exercise? And how have the two set sail together over the years? ‘Eye on China’ brings to you a brief discussion today.

There are two things to take away from this journey China and Russia have undertaken on the high seas over 14 years.

Firstly, the drills have consistently expanded in terms of the degree of trust, systems and integration, or geographical reach, and have been interspersed with spurts in the growth of duration when the context called for it.

For instance, in 2012, it was announced as a means to build confidence between Moscow and Beijing, and conduct drills with pomp and show in the Yellow Sea, which is shared by both countries. In terms of geographic scope, the exercise went to the Mediterranean and Baltic iterations, then to seas around Japan and ASEAN, and of course, all around the Pacific. It has included strategic bomber patrols since the 2010s. The 2024 exercise marked the first addition of an anti-submarine component to the drills. Subsequently, it integrated Iran into a trilateral format in the Gulf of Oman in 2019 and, by the 2020s, had become an annual fixture, with regular joint patrols by both parties in the Sea of Japan and the Western Pacific.

Secondly, they have often attempted to respond to geopolitical tensions. For example, Joint Sea-2016 was longer and much more combat-focused than before after the UNCLOS tribunal ruling. Then, there were the blockade and boarding drills after the 2022 cross-Strait tensions between China and Taiwan. Japan and the US have consistently been targets. But the latter had to shadow Beijing and Moscow as they passed Alaska during a particularly tense period in 2023.

Let’s start with a report published by the PLA Daily, which talks about how the exercise featured drills on submarine search and rescue, maritime strike, and air and missile defence, along with oft-repeated language about enhancing “mutual trust and shared responsibility for peace.” Nonetheless, three details in this year’s exercise are noteworthy.

The first is that Beijing reports the exercises were conducted “without a predetermined script,” with grassroots commanders making real-time decisions on formation manoeuvring and firepower allocation based on the “tactical situation” and hydrographic conditions. Execution aside, the idea itself is interesting and ambitious, because unscripted exercises are usually attempts to foster genuine interoperability.

The second is the composition of the maritime strike part of the exercise. The PLA Daily story reports that the Russian missile cruiser Varyag was the first to detect a simulated surface target and that it cued the engagement, which was subsequently prosecuted by Chinese and Russian main guns. The scene description goes further:

Moments later, the Kaifeng [a Type 051 Destroyer] handled the air threat while Russian ships provided supplementary fire.

This is a combined-arms task organisation across two navies with different doctrines, data links and crew, which is difficult to execute, and the description here is more about tasks conducted in each other’s presence, than genuine interoperability. Nonetheless, like a joint arms training and preparedness endeavour, the effort to interlink language on commands and simultaneous detection and fire capabilities is the starting point.

The third bit is the vitality of submarines and submarine rescue vessels, which the article itself flags as a shift from surface-only cooperation toward “integrated surface-and-undersea combat operations.” Because submarines are some of the most sensitive platforms any navy owns, drilling with them alongside a foreign fleet is a trust signal of a different order.

The early iterations of Joint Sea were relatively modest. Joint Sea-2012, again focused on the Yellow Sea, was essentially a way to shake hands without letting a Cold War hangover dominate security endeavours. 25 warships, 13 aircraft, 9 helicopters, and a focus on communicating in the military domain without confusion.

With Joint Sea-2013, in the Peter the Great Gulf near Vladivostok, elements of combat readiness began creeping in. That iteration, for example, experimented with a combined flotilla passing through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan, and sailing around the Japanese archipelago. It was the largest drill undertaken by the PLA Navy with a foreign one. It was the largest ever, involving 19 warships, 8 aircraft, and 4,000 military personnel.

By 2014, in the East China Sea, the two navies were practising anti-submarine warfare and air defence and fielding their first shared command information system, enabling Chinese and Russian commanders to exchange secure tactical military instructions.

After that iteration, the exercises stretched their legs. In 2015, they split into two phases. The first was in the Mediterranean, where the PLA Navy conducted its first operational outing in European waters, having travelled after conducting anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. The second phase was in the Sea of Japan, which ended with a transit through the Soya Strait into the Sea of Okhotsk and up towards the Bering Sea, near the American Aleutians. This is a manoeuvre that the two sides repeated in September 2022 and again in July 2023. Soon after the second phase gave over in early September 2015, the PLAN felt emboldened and made what the Pentagon classified as “innocent passage” as far up as the northern Pacific.

The 2016 Joint Sea exercises were arguably the most intense for the obvious reason that it was the year of the UNCLOS Tribunal Ruling Award in favour of the Philippines vis-à-vis the South China Sea. As a result, China and Russia expanded the joint exercise from the three- to four-day affair it had been so far to an eight-day show, including live-fire drills, sea crossings, island landing operations, and island defence and offence exercises.

In 2017, the PLAN sent the Type 052D destroyer Hefei and Type 054A frigate Yuncheng all the way to the Baltic, at NATO’s doorstep, before a second phase in the Sea of Japan trialled deep-submergence rescue work with the Russian rescue ship Igor Belousov. In 2018, the naval drills were folded into Russia’s enormous Vostok-2018 exercise, to which China sent some 3,200 troops and thirty aircraft.

By 2019, the two were back to Qingdao. The exercise featured noteworthy signals of trust between the two navies, in that they cross-docked submarine rescue vehicles onto each other’s boats and transferred crew across equipment lines. The same exercise featured their first coordinated live firing of short-range ship-to-air missiles – China’s HQ-7 and Russia’s Kinzhal.

After a year-long halt owing to the Pandemic in 2020, the 2021 exercise focused on a joint patrol essentially revolving around Japan over seven days. The exercise saw the deployment of advanced surface combatants, including the PLAN’s Type 055 10,000-ton guided-missile destroyer Nanchang and the Type 052D destroyer Kunming.

In 2022, in the East China Sea, the PLA Navy under the Eastern and Northern Theater Commands, alongside Moscow’s fleet, rehearsed joint blockade operations, visits, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) drills, and live-fire air defence. The context for this newfound emphasis was, of course, Nancy Pelosi’s Taipei visit, and the rigmarole of Chinese countermeasures it unlocked. Not to mention that, in the same year, Tokyo unveiled its new National Security Strategy, which introduced a revitalised Japanese national defence budget and a focus on counterstrike capabilities.

The 2023 exercise further extended the counterresponse to Tokyo, basing drills entirely in the Sea of Japan and conducting them under the theme “safeguarding strategic maritime passages.” This exercise explored a new area of interoperability when a Chinese KJ-500 early-warning aircraft, along with some J-16 fighter jets, flew actually from Russian airfields in the Far East. The follow-on patrol took the combined flotilla past Alaska, and was, notably, shadowed by US Navy destroyers.

By 2024, conducted in July in the South China Sea off Zhanjiang, Chinese and Russian ships were intercepting high-speed anti-ship missiles under a single command centre. This involved one side’s vessel firing a surface-to-air missile and the other using its gun, before the two resumed joint patrols from the North Pacific down to the South China Sea. A similar concept was retested in 2026.

Finally, in 2025, the Joint Sea, referred to by the Russians as ‘Maritime Interaction 2025’, found itself in the Sea of Japan, with coordination and command functions based in Vladivostok. This iteration focused heavily on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and undersea integration. A major tactical milestone achieved was the official integration of a PLAN conventional diesel-electric submarine into the drills, operating alongside the Russian Kilo-class submarine Volkhov. This is where submarine-based openness enters the picture.

The Russian flotilla was led by the Udaloy-class destroyer Admiral Tributs, while the Chinese fleet featured the heavyweight Type 052D guided-missile destroyer Shaoxing. The exercise focused on submarine hunting, air defence operations, and live-fire artillery drills under simulated combat conditions. Following the five-day drills, their combined force embarked on a joint maritime patrol in the Pacific Ocean.

Firstly, India has often treated its relationship with Moscow as a hedge against Chinese pressure. The more Russia becomes intertwined with China, especially on military and security issues, the less that hedge is worth, and the harder it becomes to treat Russia as a genuinely independent security partner.

Second, there is a supply-chain question. A large share of India’s military hardware is Russian in origin or design. As Russia’s defence-industrial architecture draws closer to China’s, the risks surrounding sensitive technology and reliable supply may gradually increase.

The third is the portability, or rather, the extension of this template to other partners, even if loosely so. Iran and North Korea may increasingly tend to participate in a joint China-Russia military apparatus, which may include elements ranging from weapons co-production to joint exercises and even collective defence. No matter the transactional nature of such a partnership – can Delhi rely on similar partners?

Eye on China is a weekly newsletter curated by the Geostrategy Programme at The Takshashila Institution, a public policy think-tank based out of Bengaluru, India.

Declaration on the use of AI/ML: Translation from Mandarin to English via the use of LLMs.