A Naval Aviation Unit Guides Officers and Soldiers to Firmly Establish the Concept of Systems Integration
A Naval Aviation Unit Guides Officers and Soldiers to Firmly Establish the Concept of Systems Integration——
Training to Clench Fingers into a Fist, Fighting with the Arm Commanding the Fingers as One
■ Fu Lin, Zhou Yu
"Only by integrating into every training session and merging at every combat position can systems integration (体系融合) be achieved." In early summer, a Naval Aviation unit organized a training situation analysis meeting, and the summary remarks of one of the unit's leaders left Staff Officer Xiong of the operations and training department with a deep impression.
Staff Officer Xiong's reflections trace back to a training failure.
Not long ago, during a coordinated training exercise, the unit joined hands with a sister unit to resist the "enemy," but the results fell far short of expectations. During the after-action review, a pilot from the sister unit stated bluntly: "The target azimuth information you provided was not accurate enough, and the air situation (空情) was not transmitted fast enough. We were like two fists swinging together but unable to hit the same point."
"Modern warfare is the confrontation of system against system, the contest of network against network. Any single link that is out of sync could become a 'gap' in winning on the battlefield." This failure led the unit's Party committee to recognize deeply that in the past they had pursued the completion of their own training metrics too narrowly, with insufficient appreciation of the importance of integrating into system-of-systems operations (体系作战) and achieving victory through coordination, and had imperceptibly fallen into the habitual thinking of "training behind closed doors."
To address this, the unit's Party committee resolved to turn the blade inward, starting from day-to-day training, binding subjects with high coordination requirements—such as early warning and surveillance, and command and control—together with sister units for joint training, tempering mutual understanding and improving capabilities through routine coordination, and working to bridge the "last mile" between the training ground and the battlefield.
However, contradictions gradually emerged: the two units were organizing training at the same location, but their training tasks and schedules differed, frequently producing situations of "you fly daytime, we train nighttime; you need airspace, we need flight routes."
During one flight-day training session, Staff Officer Xiong, as he normally would, skillfully drew up a flight training plan—including subjects such as command and control—based on syllabus requirements and his own unit's training schedule, only to have it rejected on the spot by the unit's leadership: "The sister unit has no flight plan. In this command and control subject, who exactly is being 'controlled'? How is it being 'controlled'?"
The pointed question left Staff Officer Xiong momentarily red-faced: in his single-minded rush to keep up with the training schedule, he had ignored the lesson of the previous training failure. This kind of "going it alone" superficially accelerated his own unit's training progress, but in reality reduced "systems integration" to empty talk and widened the distance between training and actual combat.
"Any 'watered-down' behavior on the training ground will plant hidden dangers for winning on the battlefield." At a combat and training discussion meeting (议战议训会), participants analyzed this typical case and concluded that organizing training in a way that "integrates" when convenient and "separates" when not stems from treating the completion of syllabus requirements and passing higher-level assessments as the ultimate goal, while ignoring the fundamental purpose of training—being able to fight and to win. This thinking of "training for scores, not training for victory in war" is in essence a reflection of a distorted performance-achievement outlook (政绩观偏差) in the domain of military training.
After in-depth discussion, participants ultimately reached a consensus: to integrate into the system, one must think of joint operations at all times and focus on coordinated action in all places, carving the concept of systems integration into one's bones and transforming it into the conscious thought and conscious action of officers and soldiers.
When schedules conflict, proactively coordinate in advance and flexibly adjust plans to align both sides' needs; when training requirements conflict with logistics and equipment support, innovate support models and improve the capability to support flight operations by different aircraft types at the same location… To improve the operational capability for interconnection, integration, and combined-force victory (互联互融、合力制胜), the unit and its sister unit, after thorough deliberation, explored and established a routine training coordination mechanism: each month, officers and soldiers are mutually dispatched to attend the other's mission deployment meetings; each week, the key points of training plans are mutually reported; each day, flight plans are dynamically coordinated. When training plans change on short notice, timely communication and flexible adjustment follow—individual non-coordination subjects may be reduced, but training quality must not decline and standards must not be lowered.
A change in thinking opens up a new world. As the training coordination mechanism became increasingly streamlined, the training schedules of the unit and its sister unit gradually "merged into one," and exchanges among commanders, staff officers, and pilots extended from the conference room to the control tower and the tactical debriefing room.
"Now when I draw up a training plan, my first instinct is not 'what do I need to train,' but 'what do we train together.'" Reflecting on the shift in training mode, Staff Officer Xiong said with deep feeling: "On the surface, mutual communication and coordination takes more time and training plans become more complex, but the 'combat content' (含战量) of training has genuinely increased, and the unit's combat effectiveness has become more 'robust in sinew and bone.'"
More importantly, the understanding and trust between the officers and soldiers of both units participating in training has deepened continuously through systems integration. "In the past when we organized training, we felt the sister unit had too many demands and was hard to work with; the sister unit reflected that our early warning and command tempo was slow and our information transmission was not decisive enough," said one pilot from the unit. "As coordinated training has deepened, we have come to profoundly understand the sister unit's tactical needs, and we have gained new understanding of how to transmit situational information most effectively. This kind of mutual understanding can only be achieved by truly training together and exercising together."
Training to clench fingers into a fist, fighting with the arm commanding the fingers as one. Recently, the unit and its sister unit jointly organized a nighttime flight training exercise. Thanks to the unit's rapid and accurate transmission of situational information, the sister unit's combat aircraft, under conditions of complex electromagnetic interference, achieved rapid sharing of target intelligence information and seamless linkage of guidance instructions, successfully intercepting the "enemy's" incoming targets.