The Indian Navy's reconnaissance aircraft and spy drones detected, tracked and photographed a new Chinese destroyer and a tanker traversing through the Indian Ocean region. The newly-commissioned Sovremenny class destroyer, built for the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) at Russia’s St Petersburg-based North Shipyard, was picked up as soon as it entered the Arabian Sea from the Red Sea. A Tupolev-142M long-range maritime patrol aircraft, flying from the Goa naval airbase, spotted the Chinese destroyer and the accompanying tanker off Yemen’s Socotra Island, located east of the Gulf of Aden, almost 2,300 km away from the Indian mainland.