Russia Vostok 2018: Military drills involve high use of shells and ammunition

World
Europe

02:51

The final drills of Russia's Vostok-2018 end today. The ground and air forces of Russia and China rained hundreds of thousands of bombshells and bullets on the Tsugol Training Range in East Russia. Such a high use of ammunition is unusual for the Chinese army. CGTN's Ge Yunfei is at the drill site and finds out what's behind this.

Within 28 seconds, 8 rocket artilleries fire 320 rockets, raining bombshells on makeshift enemies. A Chinese artillery battalion is conducting a fire-power attacking mission in Russia's Vostok-2018 drills.

LI JINPENG, BATTALION COMMANDER PLA 78TH ARMY CORPS "The biggest difference is, we are treating this drill like a real battle, the likes of which can be unpredictable. So, we are using much more ammunition than usual. For example this launcher can fire 40 rockets but in this drill we are preparing 120 for each launch."

GE YUNFEI TSUGOL TRAINING RANGE, RUSSIA "The huge consumption of the ammunition means something different. In the past decade, China-Russia military drills mainly focus on the anti-terrorism and other non-traditional threats. But this one is special, it focuses on the traditional threats."

In modern warfare, the invincible firepower of armored tanks and vehicles practically guarantees success on the ground. Captain Zhang Lei's synthetic armored vehicle battalion carries out mobilized defense missions in the drill.

"One of my soldiers told me that he never fired so many shells. The shells he has launched in these drill days almost equals his total over the past five years. It's so cool."

Such a huge consumption of shells is also a challenge for the soldiers. For He Yaqiang, an artillerist, he and teammates have to launch almost three shells a minute.

HE YAQIANG ARTILLERYMAN "In the first three minutes, we have to fire 12 shells. Then we pause for 5 minutes. Then we fire another 32 shells in 10 minutes."

The final batch of Chinese military equipment arrived in Russia on August 29th. The Chinese army has thus been training on foreign soil for two weeks.

HUANG WEI, HEAD OF LOGISTICS PLA 78TH ARMY CORPS "The biggest problem for equipment maintenance is the location. At home, we have garages and factories, but here in the wild, with such big dusty winds, we made very careful plans beforehand to make them work in all situations."

Ge Yunfei, CGTN,Tsugol Training Range in Russia.