Russian Ships, Aircraft Destroy ‘Enemy Aircraft Carrier Group’ in Exercise near Hawaii

Russian ships, submarines and aircraft ‘destroyed’ an aircraft carrier group and military infrastructure of a mock enemy during exercises in the central Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii Islands.

The exercise involving about 20 ships, submarines, support vessels, as well as 20 aircraft and helicopters took place at a distance of about 2,500 miles southeast of the Kuril Islands last week, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced Sunday.

The Russian exercise comes against the backdrop of the U.S. Navy’s Agile Dagger 2021 submarine drill which involved a third of all American submarines in the Pacific.

The US Pacific Fleet announced June 4 that the Agile Dagger 2021 exercise is being conducted to assess the combat readiness of the submarine force. "As part of the exercise, submarines from Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), Bremerton (Washington) and San Diego (California) urgently went to sea to demonstrate their combat readiness, agility and lethality," a U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet announcement said.

Soon after, on June 10, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the start of an operational exercise in the central part of the Pacific Ocean.

The Russian MoD said that groups of ships of the Pacific Fleet, having traveled vast distances by different routes, united to conduct an exercise in a given area northwest of the Hawaiian Islands.

"Two squadrons of the Pacific Fleet ships, operating at a distance of about 2.5 thousand miles southeast of the Kuril Islands, worked out the tasks of detecting, countering and delivering missile strikes against an aircraft carrier strike group of a mock enemy," the MoD statement said.

According to the military, the simulated missile strike (against the enemy aircraft carrier) was delivered by the flagship of the Pacific Fleet cruiser Varyag, frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov besides corvettes Aldar Tsydenzhapov, Perfect and Loud.

In addition to destroying the mock enemy aircraft carrier, "the naval group, in cooperation with naval aviation, delivered a simulated strike with cruise missiles against critical military infrastructure facilities of the mock enemy," the statement read.

A submarine and long-range Tu-142M3 aircraft of the Pacific Fleet's naval aviation were involved in this stage of the exercise. Also involved in the exercise was the high-altitude fighter-interceptor MiG-31BM to track and hunt enemy aircraft.

Meanwhile, satellite imagery published by Osint via Twitter showed the Russian fleet near Hawai being shadowned by 3 American Arleigh Burke  Class Destroyers and one Sentinal Coast Guard Cutter.