China’s Liaoning Carrier Sails Past Okinawa With Two Type 055 Destroyers Days Before Keen Sword

China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning has sailed between Okinawa’s main island and Miyako Island into the Western Pacific with two Type 055 class destroyers and a Type 052D class destroyer, before turning back towards the South China Sea. Japan’s Joint Staff Office reported that the group, comprising the destroyers Anshan, Wuxi and Huainan, made the transit on October 14, a day after it was first sighted southwest of the Danjo Islands, with around ten carrier take-offs and landings observed about 250 kilometres south of Ishigaki Island. The People’s Liberation Army Navy stated through state news agency Xinhua that the voyage was part of its annual routine training plan and was not directed at any specific country. Pairing a 14-year-old aircraft carrier with two of the largest surface combatants in service anywhere, the formation highlights how far China’s escort fleet has outgrown its oldest flagship.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force, which recently launched its seventh Taigei class submarine, shadowed the group with the destroyer JS Yugiri, a P-1 patrol aircraft and a P-3C, while the Air Self-Defence Force scrambled fighters in response to the flight operations. On the same day two Japanese F-15 fighters and an E-767 early warning aircraft flew tactical training with four U.S. Air Force F-22 fifth generation fighters over the East China Sea northwest of Okinawa, the Joint Staff Office reported. The transit came only days before the Keen Sword 27 exercise, which runs from October 19 to 29 and for which Japan plans to commit about 45,000 personnel, 260 aircraft and 40 vessels. The Republic of China Ministry of National Defence separately reported 15 Chinese military aircraft and 10 naval vessels around Taiwan in the twelve hours to the morning of October 15, with 13 of the aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

The voyage is the Liaoning’s second deployment beyond the first island chain this year. It follows a 40-day voyage through the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea that ended in Qingdao on June 22, during which Japanese figures reported by USNI News recorded 170 take-offs and landings over three days in late May. The far smaller number logged on October 14 suggests a transit focused on escort coordination rather than intensive flying, with the Global Times quoting Chinese military commentator Zhang Junshe as stating that the dual Type 055 formation “has been verified multiple times.” China commissioned its third carrier, the Fujian, on November 5, 2025, making the PLA Navy the second force to operate electromagnetic catapults after the U.S. Navy, whose future carrier John F. Kennedy recovered its first F-35C on October 13.

The Liaoning was completed from the unfinished Soviet Kuznetsov class hull Varyag, bought from Ukraine in 1998, and was commissioned on September 25, 2012, launching its Shenyang J-15 fighters from a ski-jump bow that limits their take-off weight and with it the fuel and weapons they can carry. Its escorts are considerably more modern, with the Type 055 class carrying 112 vertical launch cells for air defence, anti-ship and land attack missiles on a hull displacing about 13,000 tonnes by Western estimates. The Huainan belongs to the Type 052D class, the most numerous destroyer in Chinese service, which carries 64 vertical launch cells.