Chinese navy teams up with coastguard in rare joint missile exercise
- Eastern naval and coastguard units practise responses to an attack on a flotilla
- Drill follows tensions in the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait
The PLA naval division in charge of the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea conducted a rare joint exercise with a regional coastguard unit, the navy said on Monday, without saying when or where it took place.
The “interdisciplinary and overnight” drill was aimed at improving their “coordination and combat capacity”, according to a post on the navy’s WeChat social media account.
The Eastern Theatre Command – one of the People’s Liberation Army’s five divisions – oversees the security of Shanghai and five eastern Chinese provinces, the East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait.
It conducts regular drills in the strait, but the exercises do not usually involve the coastguard, a paramilitary force that is part of the People’s Armed Police Force.
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The post said the joint exercise involved the navy’s Ezhou and Yiwu corvettes. Pictures in the post also showed coastguard vessel 11506, based in Jiangsu province.
