Underlining its gratitude for China's economic and military support for its war on Ukraine, Russia is again improving the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to hunt and sink U.S. Navy submarines .
From Monday to Wednesday, two Russian corvettes (the Gromkiy and the Rezkiy) will conduct exercises alongside the PLA Navy. The Russian defense ministry says the exercises will focus on "joint air defense exercises" and "an anti-submarine exercise with the involvement of the PLA naval anti-submarine aviation [forces]." The exercises will be held out of the southern Chinese port of Zhanjiang, close to the PLA’s main submarine force bastions on Hainan Island. In total, there are at least four major PLA submarine bases on or proximate to Hainan Island.
The anti-submarine warfare focus of these exercises is notable.
As with similar exercises this time last year , the PLA puts heavy value on the Russian navy’s anti-submarine warfare expertise. While the Russian armed forces suffer endemic corruption and professional incompetence, the Russian navy has more to be proud of. But while the submarine force is the crown jewel of the Russian military , its surface fleet also has significant experience in knowing how to search for, find, and kill American and British submarines.
Rich institutional knowledge passed down from the Cold War generation to the post-Cold War generation gives Russian commanders a much better sense than their Chinese counterparts of how American submarine commanders tend to operate. The Russian navy also has better underwater, close-in acoustic signature analysis of submarines from the United States — analysis it has likely shared with the PLA. This matters for China because if Russian submarine forces ( hello, Yasen/M ) are the crown jewel of the Russian military, U.S. submarine forces are the crown jewel of global military power.
Defined by their stealth, technical, and combat capability, U.S. attack submarines are also manned by exceptionally skilled and daring crews. Indeed, America's submarine force is only limited by the utter dysfunction of the U.S. defense industrial base . But China knows full well that Virginia- and Los Angeles-class attack submarines would be the linchpin of any U.S. effort to defend Taiwan or the Philippines in any war with the PLA. The PLA rightly fears that these submarines could wreak havoc on its troop transports, aircraft carriers, and best escort warships.
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In turn, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has an obvious interest in maximizing the PLA’s ability to neutralize or at least complicate U.S. submarine operations. Russia provides important assistance here. Put simply, exercises between Russian anti-submarine forces and the PLA’s anti-submarine forces are tantamount to training between an NFL team and a college football team. In both cases, the latter gains prospectively priceless benefits from the experience of the former.
There’s one final point to note. As with his recent dalliance in North Korea , Russian President Vladimir Putin knows that this public exercise may boost Washington's fear that any U.S.-China war might also become a U.S.-Russia war. While that prospect is unlikely, even a marginal boosting of this possibility serves to complicate U.S. war planning and political decision-making. It thus serves as another gift from Putin to his critically important Chinese patron.
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