In the Tanks: More on the Chinese "Peace Mission"

In case you are really, really interested in what went down in Peace Mission 2005 the Jamestown Foundation has put together a good summary. As I had mentioned previously Peace Mission had little to do with combatting terrorism:

The naval power and operation on display were patently unrealistic against a terrorist organization, but quite suitable for operations against a regional naval power. Indeed, the exercise was old fashioned power politics at work, aimed squarely at the governments in Pyongyang and Tokyo, to pressure North Korea to go back to the six party nuclear talks and Japan over its border claim to the Kurils. A recent breakthrough in Beijing in the six-party talks last week may in fact attest to the former...

As expected from a first-time exercise between countries with only three months of planning, it was stage-managed from start to finish. It was primarily a Chinese firepower demonstration exercise with Russian support, and combined two major, regular training exercises that both China and Russia normally hold separately. Under the auspices of the SCO, China has held a joint counter-terrorist exercise around August with a neighbor since 2003. The Russians were able to give their annual strategic exercise an extra twist by navigating their Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 bombers over a different route. The Russians used four Tu-22M3 strategic bombers and two Tu-95MS on a conventional strike mission to soften up the defenses before the amphibious landing. Using the Tu-95MS is intriguing it is a cruise missile carrier ill-suited to the conventional bombing role in comparison to the Tu-23M3 but the crews would have had the opportunity to carry out mock cruise missile attacks against possible targets in Northeast Asia. It would be interesting to know if China gave them a rigid flight plan over its airspace so as to not compromise sensitive installations.