The Light of Faith Carried by Our Predecessors Crosses Time and Space, Illuminating the Path of Independent Innovation in Laser Gyroscopes
Stepping into the "Loyal Pursuit of Light" (忠诚追光) Exhibition of Artifacts Used by Senior Experts at the National University of Defense Technology's (NUDT) Academy of Frontier Interdisciplinary Studies, one finds worn desks, annotated books, and aging laboratory equipment—objects once used by the academy's research predecessors, displayed in quiet rows. Standing before Academician Gao Bolong's lecture notes, Associate Professor Jiang Qiyuan could not help but slow his pace.
As the founding figure of China's laser gyroscope program and the first-generation academic leader of the team, Academician Gao is like "a beam of light that never fades—pure and powerful"—illuminating the path of independent innovation in laser gyroscopes and pointing the way for Jiang Qiyuan's team as it breaks through technical bottlenecks.
"Without Academician Gao, the development of China's laser gyroscope program might have been set back by more than a decade, or even longer." Jiang Qiyuan is now a core technical member of the team, but he says the light of faith carried by their predecessors can cross time and space, leading us toward new victories……
Several years ago, the academy opened the "Loyal Pursuit of Light" exhibition of artifacts used by senior experts. In my spare time, I became a regular visitor, often coming to walk through it and think about that warm yet resolute face from years past.
In 2011, I was studying mechanical engineering at a local university when NUDT came to campus to recruit graduate students. It was the first time I encountered the story of Academician Gao Bolong leading the laser gyroscope team in overcoming one formidable challenge after another.
The laser gyroscope is the "navigation core" (导航之芯) that enables advanced equipment to achieve precise operation and precision strike. More than fifty years ago, Qian Xuesen solemnly handed two small slips of paper bearing the technical principles of laser gyroscopes to the leadership of Changsha Institute of Technology—the predecessor of NUDT.
To accelerate the development of the laser gyroscope, the academy quickly formed a research group and began the effort from scratch. With no stable experimental platform, Gao Bolong braved the scorching sun to haul scrap materials back from a construction site and modified them piece by piece. With no ready-made software, he became a student again and taught himself programming. When component precision fell short of standards, he led the team to consult experienced craftsmen and did the grinding work himself……
When the laboratory proof-of-concept prototype passed its evaluation, a bucket of cold water followed: many research institutions at home and abroad that had pursued this line of research had terminated their development work. Voices within China also questioned whether success was possible—this was an entirely new field worldwide, and given the research conditions and manufacturing capabilities available at the time, achieving success was said to be harder than ascending to heaven. But Academician Gao withstood the pressure, and the engineering prototype ultimately passed its evaluation.
"In research, I am someone who can pick things up but cannot put them down. As long as a problem has not been thoroughly studied and resolved, I cannot let it go—I think about it all day, and I think about it in my dreams." Academician Gao's words stirred something deep within me: following a person like this, there is no reason not to succeed! I made up my mind to cross disciplinary lines and devote myself to inertial navigation research, becoming a successor to this team.
The first time I stepped into the laboratory, my shortcomings were immediately exposed: the densely interwoven optical components and complex optical path diagrams presented real difficulty for someone with a mechanical engineering background. During that period, I thumbed through thick reference volumes until the pages curled at the edges, and filled several notebooks with optical principles and derivations of formulas.
Whenever I wanted to retreat, the story of Academician Gao changing fields at age forty-seven always sustained me—if he could forge a path starting from nothing, what difficulty could the thorns in front of me possibly pose? After graduating and remaining at the university, I became a member of this team as I had hoped.
By that time, however, Academician Gao had already left us. From his hospital bed, he had said to his comrades with profound regret: "The development of the new-generation laser gyroscope—I fear I will not be able to see it through……" Those words became his farewell to the cause he had devoted his entire life to.
The regrets of Academician Gao are for those who come after to remedy. One summer, a key project entered its final acceptance and integration push, and I was tasked as the overall technical coordination lead for a joint debugging effort involving four organizations. Heavy summer rains battered the coastal site continuously; the factory building where we were stationed leaked in multiple places; an external power line suffered a sudden outage; interface compatibility between different systems ran into repeated obstacles; every round of debugging required re-soldering the circuits; and progress fell severely behind schedule.
That evening, I gathered the team's core members: "Back in Academician Gao's day, he didn't even have measuring instruments, yet he managed to produce a beam-splitter reflectometer (透反仪) entirely through his own exploration. No matter how hard things are for us today, can they possibly be that hard?" In the end, everyone reached a consensus: first use temporary soldering to keep progress moving, then switch to connectors later for optimization.
In the days that followed, everyone worked in rotating shifts around the clock. I moved constantly between workstations, coordinating the transfer of critical equipment, repairing circuits, and resolving technical problems one by one. When hungry, I crouched in a corner and shoveled down a few bites of food; when exhausted, I pushed a few stools together and lay down for a moment—even my dreams were filled with the state of the work.
During the final round of integrated testing, the unmanned aerial vehicle rose steadily into the air, and the signals from the two systems—airborne and ground-based—synchronized precisely on the screen. The mission was accomplished in full. Standing before the screen, my eyes grew a little warm—once again, we had turned "impossible" into "possible."
"They really had it hard back then"… "What principle is annotated in this section of the predecessor's lecture notes?"…… A quiet murmur of discussion pulled my thoughts back. At some point, several young students had come to the "Loyal Pursuit of Light" exhibition. Their discussion gradually deepened and piqued my curiosity as well. I walked over and began sharing with them the stories of years past……