Operation Red Sea (2018)

While on duty and touring through the waters of the Red Sea, the Chinese Navy receives a distress call that local pirates are boarding a local cargo ship and endangering Chinese passengers and seamen on board. They immediately deploy the 8-person Jiaolong Assault Team as their forward unit to try to slow the progress of the pirates until the heavily armed naval vessels can arrive on the scene.

Using the assistance of a forward helicopter and a sniper dispatched as part of the assault team, they make significant progress to stabilize the situation while awaiting the main Chinese fleet on duty in the Red Sea. During the operations, their sniper receives a crippling spinal injury from gunfire and must be replaced. The assault team is praised for their success once the main fleet arrives. Later, when one of the local governments on the Red Sea becomes unstable, orders are given to evacuate local personnel and workers from the mainland. Given the unrest and threats from local terrorist groups working the area, the Jaiolong Assault team is assigned the task of evacuating the Chinese citizens to safety aboard the main Chinese naval vessels in temporary harbor in the area. A local Chinese journalist also working in the area receives news that the local terrorist organizations are prepared to impede local cooperation with the Chinese by all available military and terrorist means available. They are also uncovered to have plans to weapons 'yellow cake' materials into a dirty bomb. The 8-person forward assault team is given very poor support by the local government which is in turmoil. They must relocate the Chinese civilians working in the areas to a safe deployment area 75 miles away using only a jeep convoy for transportation. They are ambushed by terrorists and take significant losses from both a mortar attack ambush while transporting their convoy. To succeed, they also decide that they must assault a local terrorist outpost with 150 terrorists, their local leader, along with their mechanized artillery and tanks. One of the terrorists is a trained sniper and assassin who causes severe setbacks to the rescue operation which the assault team has put into action. The new replacement sniper sent to replace the wounded assault team sniper from the earlier pirate engagement proves to be equal to the task and mortally shoots the trained terrorist sniper. Almost the entire forward assault team is killed in action, though the operation succeeds in preventing the terrorists plans to assemble a dirty bomb and further succeeds in its rescue operation to save innocent Chinese citizens who were being held hostage by the terrorists. The fallen soldiers are honored once they are back on board the Chinese fleet on duty in the Red Sea for their courage under fire.