The PLA Navy warship Luohe has marked its first year in service with visible operational activity, sailing into the Yellow Sea for what state-released images describe as multi-subject, real-combat training. Photos published by SoMi show the vessel conducting its first such combined exercises in March 2025 and, more recently, getting underway again as part of the new year’s military training assessments.
The pattern — an initial deployment for multi-discipline drills followed by rapid return to operational training cycles — underlines a familiar phase in bringing a new ship into service: moving from acceptance trials and ceremonial commissioning to sustained, realistic training intended to test systems, crew and tactics. The phrase “multi-subject real-combat training” in Chinese naval parlance usually signals integrated drills that exercise sensors, weapons employment, damage control and coordination with other platforms.
That emphasis matters because exercises in the Yellow Sea place the Luohe in a strategically sensitive maritime space. The Yellow Sea borders the Korean Peninsula and lies within the patrol areas of regional navies and maritime security actors. Regular PLA Navy sorties there are closely observed by neighbours and signal both routine readiness and a desire to normalise the presence of newer hulls in contested or closely watched waters.
The Luohe’s activity should be seen in the context of the broader PLA Navy modernization drive: a steady flow of new surface combatants, greater emphasis on joint and realistic training, and a push to turn platform deliveries into operational capability. Publicising these sorties serves two purposes at once — accrediting the navy’s internal training progress for domestic audiences and signalling to external observers that new vessels are being operationalised rather than mothballed.
Operationalisation of ships like the Luohe rarely changes the regional balance overnight, but it does increase maritime density and the tempo of naval activity. For neighbouring states and outside navies, the relevant indicators to watch are not only the number of hulls produced but how frequently they deploy, the complexity of the exercises they undertake, and whether they start operating as part of larger task groups or with expeditionary ambitions beyond near seas.
In short, the Luohe’s first-year drills are a small but concrete data point in a long-term pattern: the PLA Navy is steadily converting new ships into trained units operating routinely in strategically significant waters, which incrementally raises both capability and political signalling in the region.