China, Indonesia Hold First Foreign Naval Drill East of Taiwan
A Chinese and an Indonesian frigate drilled inside Taiwan's exclusive economic zone, the first time Beijing has exercised there with a foreign navy.
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Elizabeth Grubbs, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai (332) arriving at Pearl Harbor for RIMPAC 2022.
A Chinese guided-missile frigate and an Indonesian frigate carried out a joint naval exercise in waters east of Taiwan on Aug. 12, the first time China’s navy has drilled with a foreign navy in that specific stretch of ocean, according to China’s own state media, and independent analysis places the exercise inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone.
What happened, in plain terms
China’s Defense Ministry announced on Aug. 11 that the guided-missile frigate Honghe, hull number 523, a Type 054A-class ship, would conduct a bilateral “navigation exercise” with Indonesia’s frigate KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai, hull 332, a Martadinata-class ship, in waters east of Taiwan. USNI News reported the exercise ran from roughly 6:30 to 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 12 and included communications drills, formation maneuvering, and an underway replenishment, with all scheduled activities and a farewell ceremony completed by Wednesday morning, Aug. 12-13. Independent geointelligence analysis, cited by open-source defense outlet Domino Theory via the firm ingeniSPACE, placed the drill’s location inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone rather than in international waters generally understood as free of that specific jurisdictional question. Analysis of the transit also indicated the Chinese frigate turned off its Automatic Identification System, the transponder that normally broadcasts a ship’s position, during part of the passage.
Neither ship is unusual on its own. The Type 054A is China’s most numerous modern frigate class, in production and service since 2007, and Indonesia’s Martadinata-class, built to a Damen SIGMA 10514 design and commissioned in January 2018, is that navy’s lead frigate of its class. This was not, in other words, a display of new hardware. The story is where these two ordinary warships operated together, not what they are individually.
Why the location is the actual news
Per CGTN, China’s own state broadcaster, Chinese officials described the drill as being of “great significance” and stated it marked “the first time the Chinese and a foreign navy have conducted an exercise in this area.” That framing is a state claim from Chinese government-linked media, not an independently verified characterization of intent, and should be read as such: Beijing has an interest in describing the drill as ordinary and routine while also flagging it internally as a milestone, and both descriptions cannot be fully true at once.
China routinely conducts unilateral naval activity near Taiwan and periodically drills with Russia in other waters, but has not previously brought a foreign navy into an exercise specifically in the waters east of Taiwan, the side of the island facing the open Pacific and the stretch of ocean that sits along what the US and allied navies refer to as the first island chain. A first-ever foreign-navy drill there, even one framed by Beijing as routine, gives China a precedent it can point to later if it wants to normalize a foreign naval presence in waters Taipei considers part of its own economic zone.
Taiwan’s response, and Indonesia’s very different one
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council did not treat the drill as routine. Its statement, carried by both Focus Taiwan and Nikkei Asia, called the exercise a “military provocation”:
“Political manipulation… aimed at creating a false impression before the international community that the Chinese communists have jurisdiction over waters east of Taiwan,” said Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, in a statement reported by Focus Taiwan, Aug. 12, 2026.
The council urged Beijing to “immediately stop this dangerous act of undermining the status quo.” Indonesia’s navy struck a noticeably different tone, publicly describing the exercise as “routine” and explicitly stating it was unrelated to “war fighting.” That gap in framing, Taipei calling it a dangerous political act and Jakarta calling it ordinary training, is itself informative: Indonesia has no evident interest in being cast as a party to a cross-strait dispute, while Taiwan has every interest in making sure the drill is not read internationally as uncontested.
Ships worth knowing
WeaponSpecs’ systems database tracks the Type 054A, known in NATO reporting as the Jiangkai II class, as a 32-cell vertical-launch-system frigate that has become the backbone of China’s modern surface fleet since entering service in 2007, a workhorse rather than a flagship. Indonesia’s Martadinata-class, built to the Dutch Damen SIGMA 10514 design, represents Indonesia’s own push toward a more modern surface fleet, with KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai as its lead ship since 2018. Neither class is exotic. The drill’s news value sits entirely in the geography and the precedent, not in the hardware.
This drill is a distinct development from WeaponSpecs’ earlier coverage of the US rejecting a Chinese seabed-reserve claim near Scarborough Shoal, a separate South China Sea dispute involving different waters and a different legal mechanism, a resource claim rather than a naval exercise. The two stories share a common thread, Beijing testing the edges of contested maritime zones through different tools, but they are not the same event and should not be read as one continuous episode.
Sources
- Taiwan slams China over planned drill with Indonesia east of Taiwan — Focus Taiwan, Aug 12, 2026
- Taiwan condemns 'dangerous' planned Chinese navy drill with Indonesia — Nikkei Asia, Aug 11, 2026
- Chinese, Indonesian Warships Drill East of Taiwan — USNI News, Aug 13, 2026
- China, Indonesia to hold naval drill in waters east of Taiwan Island — CGTN, Aug 11, 2026
Systems mentioned
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SIGMA 10514Frequently asked questions
What actually happened? +
A Chinese Type 054A frigate, Honghe, and an Indonesian Martadinata-class frigate, KRI I Gusti Ngurah Rai, held a joint navigation exercise, including communications drills and an at-sea replenishment, in waters east of Taiwan on Aug. 12, 2026, wrapping up by Wednesday morning.
Why is this significant? +
Independent analysis placed the drill inside Taiwan's exclusive economic zone, and it is, by China's own state media's account, the first time China's navy has exercised there with a foreign navy, a precedent Taiwan's government says is designed to imply Chinese jurisdiction over those waters.
How did Taiwan and Indonesia react? +
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council called it a "military provocation" and demanded Beijing stop what it called a dangerous attempt to undermine the status quo. Indonesia's navy, by contrast, described the exercise as routine and unrelated to "war fighting," a notably softer framing than Beijing's.
Is this related to Taiwan's own military drills happening around the same time? +
It overlaps with the tail end of Taiwan's annual Han Kuang exercise, but it is a distinct event: a China-Indonesia bilateral naval drill, not a Taiwanese military action.
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