The 14th escort taskforce of the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) wrapped up the task of participating in the "Peace-13" multinational maritime joint military exercise and sailed to the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast to carry out the 14th escort mission at 17:00 on March 8, 2013.
During the exercise, the "Harbin" guided missile destroyer, the "Mianyang" guided missile frigate and the "Weishan Lake" comprehensive supply ship of the PLA Navy and the naval ships of 14 countries including Pakistan and UK jointly carried out harbor and onshore drills on 17 subjects including anti-terrorism, and maritime drills on 21 subjects, such as anti-ship firing by main guns and joint search and rescue.
Serving as a command ship and a combat ship in the exercise, the "Harbin" warship successfully accomplished various actual-troop and live-ammunition drills.
"The exercise has improved the capabilities of the officers and men on the warship, raised their awareness of overall situation, policies and regulations, made them familiar with situation handling and its procedures to cope with various situations with good reason, to our advantage and in a restrained way, and also improved the emergency-handling capability of individual warship and the taskforce. The exercise has not only trained the coordinated operation capability of the taskforce with foreign militaries under the situation close to actual combat, but also accumulated actual-combat experience for the following escort mission," said Shi Lei, captain of the "Harbin" warship.
Wu Dongzhu, deputy commander of the 14th Chinese naval escort taskforce, summarized the joint military exercise, "The exercise tested the level and capability of the PLA Navy in military training and military operations other than war (MOOTW). Meanwhile, we learnt good tactical and technical practices from foreign militaries, which will inevitably contribute much to the coming escort mission."
The Chinese officers and men were always full of enthusiasm with a good morale throughout the exercise, whether in cultural and sports exchanges or actual-troop and live-ammunition drills. They shouted out the slogan of "My work is error-free and please trust me", displaying the PLA's good image of a civilized force dedicated to peace.
"We sent three people to the shooting match and they achieved good results, ranking first, second and fourth respectively in the match. These officers and men are highly-educated and proficient in English, and thus could communicate freely and naturally with foreign sailors in an optimistic, confident and enterprising manner without the help of interpreters. They were all willing to actively exchange their views with foreign sailors, fully displaying the good comprehensive quality of the PLA Navy," said Wu Haihua, political commissar of the taskforce.
Upon the completion of the exercise, the 14th Chinese naval escort taskforce left the exercise sea area for the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the Somali coast to carry out its escort mission.
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