A civil airliner carrying hundreds of officers and men of an airborne unit and a civil cargo plane fully loaded with large combat equipment took off at noon of March 26, 2012 from an airport in central China. Another civil airliner took off from an airport of air force in south China and flied through the “prohibited air area” over the plateau and successfully delivered an aviation division of the Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responsible for stationed trainings on plateau to the designated area. This is the first time for the PLA Air Force to use civil airliners and cargo planes for synchronous support to troop unit operation.
Meanwhile, thousands of Air Force servicemen from a unit stationed in the northern Hubei province travelled day and night across various military area commands (MAC), hurrying off for the area for stationed training thousands of kilometers away by multiple mobilized approaches such as railway, highway and waterway. According to the briefing, this is the first time for the PLA Air Force to project organic troops in a three-dimensional and mobilized way. This projection is strictly in accordance with the actual-combat support procedures and adopts forms of actual troops, actual equipment and actual delivery to implement military-civilian integrated support and simultaneously launch comprehensive inspective assess and evaluation.
It is learned that this year, the PLA Air Force plans to combine the major tasks of rotated combat and stationed training, live ammunition firing practice and confrontation drill to make an overall strategic plan of organizing a three-dimensional projection of dozens of troop units in an organic way, and focus on building a military transportation support system with “air-ground linkage, comprehensive transportation, systematic support and smooth mechanism”.
At 15:00, the civil airliner carrying the reporters and the stationed training troops landed safely at an airport in Nanjing of east China’s Jiangsu province. The troop unit swiftly completed the handover for highway transportation, and headed for the stationed training area in a motorized way after passing through a green channel at the airport. At the same time, the troop units for stationed trainings delivered by railway, waterway and highway also arrived at the unloading stations in succession, and handover of personnel and equipment for highway transportation is in process in an orderly manner.
“Organizing the comprehensive long-range motorized projection of organic troop units is beneficial to integrating the established transportation strength of the PLA Air Force and various local transportation support resources, so as to fully elevate the overall support effectiveness of the military transportation of the Air Force,” said Xiang Yang, director of the Military Transportation Department of the Logistics Department of the PLA Air Force.