Raising the Banner and Leading in Battle: The Time Is Right to Forge the Joint Sword
The glorious milestone of the Party's 105th founding anniversary illuminates the magnificent journey of the Party leading the people's armed forces from victory to victory. On the new-era journey of building a strong military, the Party's banner has always guided the forward direction of training and war preparation. "We must strengthen joint training, uphold jointness as the overarching principle, develop a joint training system with our military's distinctive characteristics, and accelerate the enhancement of integrated joint operations capabilities." At the Central Military Commission Military Training Conference, Chairman Xi's earnest instructions ignited a surging engine driving the entire military to extract combat power from jointness.
Iron torrents surge across the length and breadth of the great rivers; the deep blue ocean is traversed by those who ride the waves; above the vast sky, the great roc soars ten thousand li… In recent years, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military, one vivid scene after another of vigorous military training has sketched out the magnificent panorama of the people's armed forces transforming toward war.
In the height of summer, reporters entered three training bases to examine the sweeping panorama of change in the people's armed forces' joint training, and to feel the resounding pulse of Party committees leading the fight and concentrating strength to win.
Missile simulated strikes, fighter aircraft penetration attacks, air assault forces conducting rapid helicopter landings, manned-unmanned cooperative advances… Standing inside the operations center of an Army training base, the grand spectacle of multi-service joint exercises and training rushes forward to meet the eye.
This ground, which pioneered the red-versus-blue confrontation model across the entire military in the 1990s, has always stood at the forefront of combat-realistic training. Confronting the profound evolution of the form of warfare, the base Party committee studied Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military in depth and resolutely took a critical leap forward: modern warfare is system-versus-system confrontation, and the base must leap from a "service-branch examination hall" to a "joint crucible."
A single nameplate records the base's footsteps in transforming toward war. The five characters "Joint Operations Center" (联合导演部) replaced the former "Base Operations Center" (基地导演部). "The sign changed, and the functions and mission were turned completely upside down," said Shen Qing, a member of the base's comprehensive adjudication and evaluation group.
However, the road of transformation was not smooth. In the initial exploration of jointness, the base fell into the predicament of "joint in form, scattered in spirit" (形联神散): unified topics, unified procedures, unified scripts, with each service branch going through the motions step by step. "It was lively enough, but it always felt like 'putting on a performance.'" The candid feedback from participating units made the base Party committee more clearly aware: the root cause of the disconnect between training and combat lay in rigid thinking and ossified mechanisms, and the assault on transformation had to be broken through at the Party committee level and through the reshaping of institutional mechanisms.
To thoroughly break through the training bottleneck, the base Party committee adhered to a problem-oriented approach and targeted its measures accordingly. Committee members took the lead in going down to the front lines, conducting in-depth research visits to each participating unit, comprehensively surveying the operational shortcomings and coordination weaknesses of each service branch, discarding the crude and extensive training organization model of "throwing everything in one pot," and achieving "one unit, one topic; one mission, one plan."
"Whatever the future enemy situation is, that is what we construct; whoever the actual opponent is, that is who the 'Blue Force' portrays." An expert at the base working in the field of exercise control said that under the Party committee's overall deployment, the base completely discarded formalistic training routines, fully benchmarked against combat standards to construct battlefield environments and set confrontation topics, and achieved a fundamental transformation from "passively organizing training" to "actively studying warfare," and from "training to be seen" to "training for war."
The grand narrative of joint training cannot be separated from meticulous refinement in the details. The base Party committee took the lead in optimizing the assessment and evaluation system, subdividing every scoring category and refining assessment scores to two decimal places; simultaneously building a comprehensive monitoring platform integrating panoramic cameras, high-definition pan-tilt units, and unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing the operations center to view in real time both the "large and small scenes" during exercises and training, and even "concealed scenes" inside buildings… These measures made joint training targeting more precise and made capability improvement for participating units more efficient.
"When I first came here more than ten years ago, the slogan on the barracks read 'From here, march toward the battlefield'; now it has been changed to 'This place is the battlefield.'" said Qian Yilin, an artillery soldier from an Army brigade who came here for training. From "march toward" to "is," the change of two characters reflects the base's footsteps in transforming its joint training philosophy toward combat realism, and also mirrors the resounding strides of the three services' officers and soldiers as they forge their joint warfighting capabilities here.
Not long ago, dozens of exercise controllers from a Navy training base shouldered their packs, took their plans, walked out of the base gates, and went to front-line units to assist in organizing joint live-force exercises, simultaneously validating multiple cutting-edge topics.
This action, called "delivering training to the doorstep," clearly outlines the base Party committee's transformation thinking: from "training behind the home gate" to "actively going out," they deliver the experience, methods, and concepts of joint training organization to service branch units, and sow the seeds of jointness across a broader exercise ground.
Exercise controller Wang Shihai was one of the members of the training delivery team. He still remembers the exercise and training scenes he witnessed when he first arrived at the base: during one landing exercise, officers and soldiers from the Army and Navy coordinated to launch an assault, but when the hovercraft opened its landing ramp, the terrain ahead was not suitable for Army armored units to deploy, and the officers and soldiers could only make temporary adjustments, losing the opportunity for battle; during one air defense exercise, ground air defense forces, aviation units, and surface vessels gathered together but adopted a crude approach to firepower interception, causing serious waste of resources.
At that time, "joint training" was just getting started, and "joint but not integrated, integrated but not deep" (联而不合、合而不深) was an unavoidable pain point in their training organization. "Units from each service branch were like eggs with shells, placed in the same bowl but still not truly 'breaking their shells' to merge," said Wang Shihai.
"If we cannot achieve true integration among the service branch units that come here for training, that is a dereliction of duty on our part." The base Party committee unified thinking and built consensus, making the breaking down of joint barriers and the deepening of the integration of combat and training a major assault task for the Party committee.
Thereafter, the base Party committee used the goal of building a "training-organization leading-type joint training vanguard" as its guiding objective, established a monthly "Military Research Day" to organize officers and soldiers to broadly study the military theory, tactics, and methods of different service branches, and had each standing committee member take the lead on one cutting-edge topic per year, personally leading the study and design of warfare. Building on this foundation, they also broadly constructed deeply integrated joint training platforms, with exercise scale gradually expanding from a few departments of a single service branch to dozens of specialties across multiple service branches.
Integration deepened through one genuine, hard-fought confrontation after another. In anti-submarine training, Air Force aircraft and Navy vessels combined their strengths and covered for each other, accurately locking onto underwater "ghosts"; in landing exercises, Marine Corps personnel and Army tank units coordinated their assault, mutually supporting each other and jointly overcoming difficulties; in air defense operations, multi-service forces wove a three-dimensional fire network… Each successful coordination is a solid imprint of breaking down barriers and deepening jointness.
Over the past several years, hundreds of units from various service branches have formed training pairs here and fought through wind and waves together. The joint "symphony" reverberating between sea and sky bears witness to the profound transformation of different forces deeply integrating on the journey of joint training.
In the air, warplanes roar through the clouds, splitting the sky; on the ground, iron torrents roll forward, churning up dust; in the electromagnetic domain, the invisible battlefield flashes with blades and swords… In midsummer, a full-element, full-system joint exercise by an Air Force unit is in fierce progress. This desert, once famous for forging the "aerial dagger," is now rising to become a "system battlefield" for tempering the three services' joint blade.
"These past few years, our training 'circle of friends' has grown larger and larger," said pilot Meng, wiping sweat from his brow as he stepped off the exercise ground, his words carrying pride.
This pride stems from the sweeping transformation in the exercise ground's scope. Flipping through the unit's records of major exercises and training organized over the past five years, a series of names stands out prominently: a Rocket Force brigade, an Army combined-arms battalion, an Information Support Force detachment… The desert exercise ground, once dominated by Air Force training, has now become a "grand examination hall" where all service branches sharpen their swords together. Over the past several years, the number of service branch units coming here for resident training has multiplied several times over, and the proportion of joint exercise and training sessions has risen from less than thirty percent to over seventy percent—this rising figure is a vivid footnote to the expansion of joint training across all domains and all dimensions.
"Victory only smiles upon those who can foresee the changes in the character of war." During the interview, the unit's leadership quoted a famous military theorist's words to articulate the deeper logic behind the transformation in training organization.
In recent years, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military, the unit's Party committee has closely followed the tide of military transformation and kept its sights fixed on the form of future warfare, proactively breaking free from the constraints of traditional training thinking, using the Party committee's forward-looking planning to lead the reshaping of the unit's capabilities, going all out to build a military-leading "combat laboratory," and continuously driving the iterative upgrading of joint training and the accelerated generation of new-quality combat power (新质战力)—
Building a "system Blue Force" (体系蓝军) to sharpen the joint blade. In the past, the Blue Force played more of a role as a "sparring wingman"; today, the "system Blue Force" has become the dominant force on the battlefield. Following a realistic operational system, they integrate elite forces from multiple service branches, construct a realistic joint battlefield environment, and allow the Red Force to practice command and coordination against a "real opponent." Integrated combat unit confrontation, real-scenario combined-arms confrontation, simulated joint system confrontation… One innovative measure after another has continuously elevated the "combat content" (含战量) of joint training.
Advancing "digital-intelligent transformation" (数智转型) to empower high-end warfare. Walking into the unit's digital-intelligent laboratory, rows of servers operate at high speed and digital battlefield situation maps update in real time. Digital-intelligent deduction systems, virtual confrontation training platforms, big data analysis and assessment… The new-quality forces of science and technology-based training are reshaping the form of joint training. Commanders' decisions are repeatedly deduced on digital sand tables, unit actions are validated multiple times on virtual battlefields, a batch of new operational methods suited to integrated joint operations has emerged accordingly, and the efficiency of "fight one battle, advance one step" has multiplied.
Breaking the "single-aircraft mindset" (单机思维) to calibrate the coordinates of victory in war. This unit, famous throughout the military for hosting the "Golden Helmet" (金头盔) competition, has the courage to break down ideological barriers—breaking free from the fixed mindset of "single-aircraft competition" and shifting the evaluation criteria for the "Golden Helmet" from "individual aerial combat skills" to "magnitude of contribution to the system." The former "aerial combat aces" now think more about "what role do I play in the system" and "what have I contributed to jointness."
"These past few years, more and more 'top students' have been coming here, and we must achieve transformation and upgrading with a sense of urgency that cannot wait and cannot slow down," said one of the unit's leaders.
From the heartland of the Central Plains to the shores of the South China Sea, and then to the Gobi Desert of the northwest—looking back along this magnificent axis of joint training that runs the length of the country, the three training bases stand like milestones of the era, sketching out the magnificent picture of new-era military training and war preparation advancing toward jointness, and marking the solid footsteps of the people's armed forces marching toward victory under the absolute leadership of the Party.
The bugle call of the new journey has already sounded. We firmly believe that under the guidance of the Party banner, the pace of our military's joint training will surely become more resolute and far-reaching, and this heroic army will surely forge an invincible joint blade of victory in war, continuing to write the era's glory of heeding the Party's command, being capable of winning battles, and maintaining an excellent work style!