russia's "ocean-2024" military exercise focuses on both deterrence and enhancement
2024-09-26
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russia's "ocean-2024" military exercise focuses on both deterrence and enhancement
■dai xunxun
from september 10 to 16, the russian military held the "ocean-2024" strategic exercise. russian president vladimir putin said that this was the largest naval exercise in russia in 30 years. against the backdrop of the stalemate between russia and ukraine and the attack on russia's homeland, the russian military conducted such a large-scale maritime exercise, which not only demonstrated its strong military capabilities to deter opponents, but also revealed its realistic considerations of focusing on improving its maritime combat capabilities.
it is reported that this exercise is divided into two phases: command agency drills and actual troop operations. it aims to test the key elements of the combat readiness of the russian navy and aerospace forces command agencies, troops and formations, ensure the coordination of operations, and combine the experience of special military operations to test the russian army's readiness for the comprehensive use of high-precision weapons and advanced weapons.
russia has invested a large number of naval and air combat forces in this exercise, which has a strong deterrent and countermeasure against the united states and its allies. the wide range of this exercise and the large number of troops involved have demonstrated that russia still has a strong strategic control capability in a certain sense. the exercise was conducted in multiple sea areas such as the pacific ocean, the arctic ocean, the mediterranean sea, the caspian sea and the baltic sea, with more than 400 ships, 125 aircraft, more than 7,500 weapons and equipment and more than 90,000 officers and soldiers deployed. it is worth noting that this russian exercise was held at the same time as a series of nato exercises around russia, sending a strong signal of confrontation. in particular, the united states and many european countries have recently threatened to lift restrictions on ukraine's use of long-range weapons to attack russian targets, and the countermeasure meaning of this russian exercise is even more obvious.
at the same time, the training format, course setting, and characteristics of strengthening sea-air coordination of russia's "ocean-2024" strategic exercise also reveal russia's urgent need to enhance its maritime combat capabilities by strengthening actual-troop exercises.
the confrontation exercise is close to the actual combat environment. confrontation against actual combat is a common form of exercise for the russian army. in this exercise, the pacific fleet, the baltic fleet and the caspian fleet are the red army, and the northern fleet is the blue army. both sides dispatched their main warships to complete the scheduled tasks. this kind of strong confrontation exercise can effectively enhance the russian army's rapid response and combat capabilities in complex environments.
courses were set up by absorbing battlefield experience from the russian-ukrainian conflict. during the russian-ukrainian conflict, the ukrainian unmanned combat forces adopted many new tactics, and repeatedly used unmanned boats and drones to launch raids on russian black sea fleet ships and bases, causing heavy losses to the russian army. the course setting of this exercise fully absorbed the battlefield experience of russia and ukraine, focusing on repelling the large-scale maritime offensive of the imaginary enemy, and setting up courses such as anti-unmanned boats, anti-drones, naval base defense operations, sea landings and transport escorts. during the exercise, russia deployed ka-29 attack helicopters, anti-sabotage boats and electronic warfare equipment to practice anti-unmanned boats and anti-drones, indicating that russia is applying battlefield experience to military training and promoting innovation in tactics to adapt to the new situation of unmanned combat.
sea-air coordination improves the joint combat capability at sea. during the exercise, the russian aerospace forces dispatched more than 100 aircraft and helicopters of various types to participate in the exercise to cooperate with the navy to complete relevant exercise tasks, focusing on the exercise of air-sea coordinated integrated combat capabilities. the russian aerospace forces su-30sm and su-35s fighters covered the tu-160 strategic bombers flying over the barents sea and launched cruise missiles at important "enemy" targets; tu-22m3 long-range bombers attacked the "enemy" fleet over the sea of okhotsk and the baltic sea respectively; su-24 bombers bombed ground targets on the kola peninsula under the cover of su-33 carrier-based aircraft. the joint participation of sea and air forces in the exercise will help improve the overall combat capability of the russian army.
it is worth mentioning that the "ocean" series of exercises is the traditional code name for large-scale maritime exercises of the soviet navy. against the backdrop of the us-soviet hegemony, the 1970 "ocean" exercise first demonstrated to the west the powerful combat capabilities of the soviet navy in the "gorshkov era", which brought great deterrence to nato. decades later, the "ocean" exercise was restarted again, not only intending to show russia's diligent pursuit of great power status and its strong ability to defend national security by force, but also demonstrating its determination not to compromise or give in in the confrontation with nato.
(author’s unit: academy of military science, institute of war studies)
(source: china military network-liberation army daily)