Russian Warship Simulates Missile Strike on ‘Enemy,’ Navy Says

A Russian missile boat held a firing exercise in the Sea of Japan on Monday in a possible preamble to springtime drills that will likely involve the Chinese military.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet said the Project 12411 corvette R-18 conducted a mock missile strike on a “simulated enemy” surface vessel, according to a statement carried by the state news agency RIA Novosti.

The imaginary adversary was not named, but the missile corvette’s crew practised the simulated missile attack in addition to its live-fire exercise and electronic warfare training, the report said.

The Russian navy’s Pacific Fleet is headquartered in the town of Fokino on the Peter the Great Gulf in the Sea of Japan, which the two Koreas call the East Sea.

The fleet’s warships including Project 12411 corvettes—also known by the NATO reporting name Tarantul III—are frequently watched by the air and maritime forces of Japan as they transit into the Western Pacific.

Tokyo, a U.S. security treaty ally, has a long-running feud with Moscow over several of the Russia-held Kuril Islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories.

In recent years, however, Japanese defense planners also have sounded the alarm over the deepening strategic alignment between Moscow and Beijing, especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

Both Russian and Chinese air and naval assets are expected to step up maneuvers in the Sea of Japan and the Western Pacific in the coming weeks in line with past trends, which have seen both militaries join forces for bilateral exercises.

Last July, the Russian and Chinese navies and air forces presented a united front against the United States and its regional allies Japan and South Korea when they held joint drills in the Sea of Japan.

And in December, Seoul and Tokyo both scrambled fighter planes to head off a joint bomber patrol by the the Russian and Chinese air forces, a major show of force that stretched from the Sea of Japan into the East China Sea.

Last week, the Joint Staff of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces published data that showed its fighter aircraft had scrambled 21 times in February—12 times against Russian aircraft and nine times against China’s planes.

It included a Russian air force Il-20 electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft that on February 9 flew a sortie in the Sea of Japan along the Japanese coast, according to a Joint Staff report at the time.

The Japanese Defense Ministry’s monthly statistics, illustrated in a Newsweek chart, showed Japanese aircraft scrambling 94 times last April—at the start of major springtime military maneuvers in 2023—for a total of 599 times in the 11 months since.

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment. The Chinese Defense Ministry could not be reached for comment.