South China Morning Post:
Vostok 2018, Russia’s biggest war games in nearly 40 years involving almost 300,000 troops, over 1,000 military aircraft and two Russian naval fleets, took place from September 11 to 15 in Russia’s central and eastern military districts.
What made it more exceptional is that it was attended by 3,200 troops with 30 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and a great deal of armoury and artillery from China. Never before has the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) been involved so massively in a joint exercise overseas.
Such exercises are significant to the PLA primarily for two reasons. First, only large-scale exercises can truly reveal the capacity of a military in terms of strategic planning, power projection, command, control and communication. Therefore, the more sophisticated the exercises, the better.
