A Regiment of the Central Theater Command Air Force Aviation Corps: Forging the "Spiritual Cutting Edge"
Forging the "Spiritual Cutting Edge"
— An Investigative Report from a Regiment of the Central Theater Command Air Force Aviation Corps
■ Ren Zhaoyi, Air Force News Reporter Fang Leilei
During high-altitude garrison training, a combat aircraft takes off beside a snow-capped mountain (archival photo). Photo by Ren Zhaoyi.
Can we really fly like this?
Night had fallen, and a thin mist hung in the air. At the airfield of a regiment of the Central Theater Command Air Force Aviation Corps, aircraft stood in formation, engines roaring and shattering the silence, as a long-range cross-regional mobility training exercise was poised to begin.
Though a routine subject, it was full of "challenges" — the mission timeline was compressed by nearly half, the route traversed a new airspace, multiple "enemy situations" were inserted en route, emergency situations were introduced on the fly under low-visibility meteorological conditions, and flight crew members did not receive their strike coordinates until moments before the canopy closed.
Difficulty surged; risk increased. Yet the flight crews' eyes were resolute: this is exactly how we must fly.
The formation lifted off in the dead of night and immediately encountered multiple interceptions. After breaking through in fierce combat, several aircraft arrived at the target airspace with fuel levels approaching their limits. With no room to retreat, the crews forced their way through on the margins of limiting conditions and precisely "destroyed" the simulated targets. After fighting through an entire day and night, they returned under the stars and moon, flight crew members soaked through their flight suits, the taut nerves of the command personnel only slightly eased.
"Organizing training this way carries high risk and enormous pressure — one slip and things go wrong. But as long as combat demands it, no matter how high the risk, we must try." Reflecting on this "extraordinary episode" from not long ago, the regiment commander stated plainly: leading troops in war requires the courage to challenge risk.
Courage is the cutting edge of a soldier's spirit. Behind the character "brave" (勇) lies the intense sense of crisis these officers and soldiers maintain — the constant feeling that their skills are not yet sufficient. Behind the character "dare" (敢) lies their mission-driven consciousness (使命自觉) to refine their martial skills and strengthen their capabilities without pause.
Tempering through storm after storm forges hearts of courage, one by one.
In aviation units, the pressure of safety is very real.
For this regiment, this long-range cross-regional mobility subject was anything but ordinary — long flight times, multiple takeoff and landing airfields, complex meteorological conditions, and along the way, a "hard fight" to be waged alongside units flying dissimilar aircraft.
At the pre-training planning meeting, the staff section reported, as was customary, a classic route that had been flown for many years. Faced with familiar airspace, the regiment Party committee leadership raised the question: could a new route be opened?
Some expressed reservations: "If we switch to a new route and additional safety risks arise, who bears responsibility?"
"Fear of bearing risk stems from the conservative mentality of 'no accidents equals achievement.'" Amid the skepticism, the regiment Party committee leadership reached consensus: "If you tense up — or even become so afraid that you want to hide — the moment you see risk, how will you ever take the battlefield? It is precisely because there is risk that responsibility is required."
They then decisively scrapped the original plan, substituted a route that had never been flown before, and raised the difficulty to the upper limit.
Embracing the entirely new challenge, morale across the regiment ran high. They studied carefully, prepared thoroughly, and ultimately completed the mission beyond expectations. Yet alongside the scorecard was a full page of problems urgently requiring resolution.
"If we hadn't tried it, how would we have known we still had these shortcomings?" said one veteran aviator with deep feeling. Problems encountered in training are not a nuisance — they are the "stepping stones" to improving capability and making progress. Having flown for a full day and night, he stepped off the aircraft and immediately began an enthusiastic after-action review.
Thereafter, the regiment Party committee and staff kept their eyes fixed on actual combat, continuously generating new and difficult problems, keeping all officers and soldiers in a state of urgency and crisis, striving to think what others had not thought of and to do what others dared not do.
After several training sessions, flight crew members broadly reported: change the direction, change the weather, introduce an unfamiliar emergency situation — some signature skills stopped working, but new killing moves also emerged under the pressure of extreme conditions.
During one night long-range strike training, the commander suddenly introduced a new emergency situation: the alternate airfield had been closed due to heavy fog. This "interlude" meant that every subsequent operation had to be executed flawlessly — otherwise, not only would the mission be impossible to complete, there would be nowhere for the aircraft to land.
In the vast darkness, the crew coordinated closely, calculated every link precisely, and controlled the aircraft steadily. They ultimately located the target in unfamiliar airspace, completed the simulated strike within the prescribed time, and returned safely — bringing back precious data and invaluable experience gathered under extreme conditions.
"Putting pressure on ourselves, setting our own difficult problems, and deliberately seeking hardship — all of it is to gain the initiative on the battlefield." A weapons control officer (武器控制师) in the regiment said: the more dangerous roads you travel, the more confidence you naturally accumulate.
During one major mission, flight crew members from the regiment flew their aircraft directly toward the target airspace. Unexpectedly, the weather changed suddenly, and the data prepared beforehand deviated from actual conditions. Facing this impromptu test, the weapons control officer remained calm and immediately recalculated. The crew then operated according to the revised data and struck the target in a single blow.
This engagement confirmed: tempering through storm after storm forges not only emergency response techniques, but hearts of courage, one by one.
Trial and error is also advancing toward the correct direction by a roundabout route.
The audacity to fight and the will to press forward are genes etched into the bones of this unit. Previously, the unit's equipment was relatively dated. Watching sister units successively re-equip with new aircraft, the regiment's officers and soldiers were consumed with anxiety.
"It wasn't that we were anxious to re-equip — it was that everyone was worried about whether we still had the fighting power to win a battle." The regiment leadership stated plainly: re-equipping happens in sequence, but there is no sequence when it comes to training hard to win. For a soldier, the true crisis is not inferior equipment but insufficient capability.
Confronting the reality of the gap, they proactively raised the slogans: "Equipment can be old, but thinking must not be outdated" and "Equipment upgrades follow orders; mental upgrades depend on self-discipline." They organized officers and soldiers to conduct in-depth study and training across five areas — theoretical innovation, target research, tactical innovation, equipment innovation, and technical support — and jointly tackled more than ten research subjects, striving to earn the "pass" for the future battlefield.
The road ahead was fraught with risk, time was extremely tight, and "defeating the strong with the weak" (以弱胜强) was anything but easy. They kept their heads down and pressed forward, their steps resolute.
During one exercise mission, the regiment boldly volunteered for the fight, competing on the same stage as units equipped with far more advanced aircraft in live-munitions strike capability. At first, few paid attention to them. After several rounds, their bombing results ranked near the top, in no way inferior to the results achieved by the advanced aircraft. Sister units could not help but praise them: "You achieved the effect of precision-guided munitions using conventional ordnance."
On another occasion, the regiment was mixed into a formation with sister units for a "combat" exercise, and many assumed they would play a supporting role. But after fierce opposition, the only aircraft to successfully complete the mission and "survive" belonged to this unit. The flight crew members of the sister units who had fought alongside them cast admiring glances: they won because they had studied deeply and their skills were strong.
This was no exaggeration. The old equipment produced outstanding results because they relied on an indomitable fighting spirit and relentless day-and-night training. They understood clearly: no matter how advanced the weapon, basic skills must be trained to a high level; no matter how equipment iterates, fallback methods must never be abandoned.
During one confrontation exercise, a crew from the regiment was ordered into action. In the heat of battle, they were suddenly subjected to intense enemy electromagnetic jamming, and the aircraft's electronic equipment nearly failed entirely. At the critical moment, following tactics they had previously studied, supported by pre-prepared data, they used manual methods to precisely calculate the route and delivered a decisive blow before the adversary could react.
In the post-battle review, the regiment's penetration and strike results were marginally better than those of the more capable aircraft. "This victory was won precisely by a skill that might seem outdated — manual calculation." One flight crew member reflected that the battlefield is full of uncertainty, and there is no "completed" state in refining tactics. When applied correctly, old methods can still find new uses and may even generate greater power.
Based on this understanding, the regiment's officers and soldiers developed new lines of thinking: How can old skills be trained into new trump cards? How can tactical research and application achieve innovation while discarding the outdated? How can penetration and strike operations exploit the adversary's weaknesses while leveraging one's own strengths?
The path of exploration was not smooth — they stumbled, experienced setbacks, produced erroneous data, and even took "detours" and "dead ends."
"Some of the tactics validated on paper proved ineffective; some of the ingenious ideas conceived through hard thinking also had little practical effect." One flight crew member said that at first, everyone was somewhat discouraged, feeling that many days of hard work had been wasted. But on reflection, such effort was equally valuable — at minimum, it proved that "this road leads nowhere." Trial and error is also advancing toward the correct direction by a roundabout route. On the road of striving forward, one must hold firmly to the objective and keep one's mind fixed on war — one cannot look ahead and behind, wavering and hesitating.
The true charge is to strive to run ahead of the times.
In earlier years, the regiment's officers and soldiers held firmly to one conviction: only by training to the limit can one reach the peak of strength. Behind nearly every record they broke in training was a story of blood running hot.
But in recent years, their understanding has quietly shifted: in an era of striving, nearly everyone is accelerating, everyone has a few tricks up their sleeve, and to win on the battlefield, fighting with all one's might is far from enough.
New equipment and new tactics struck them with particular force. On one occasion, after witnessing a new-model aircraft deliver a thunderous strike, a pilot from the regiment who had previously won the "Golden Dart" award could not help but exclaim: "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, it would have been hard to imagine — a battle can be fought like this!"
"We can defeat a superior adversary with inferior means, but this is absolutely not the inevitable law of winning wars." The regiment leadership said with deep meaning: the true charge is to strive to run ahead of the times.
Even while flying older aircraft types, they consciously expanded their thinking, explored new knowledge, and mastered new skills, routinely "arm-wrestling" with units equipped with new aircraft, keeping their finger on the pulse of the times and anticipating battlefield developments.
After a period of time, they reaped considerable rewards — not only had their skills advanced, but they had also arrived at new insights: in a certain sense, an upgrade in thinking can allow equipment to achieve iteration beyond its physical parameters.
After re-equipping with new aircraft, when sister units generously shared their experience, the regiment did not adopt it wholesale. Instead, they studied the techniques, updated their concepts, and upgraded their thinking with a "critical mindset." "Look — we condensed a thick stack of experience compilations into a slim conversion manual," said one young flight crew member excitedly. The process of condensing knowledge was also a process of simplifying complexity, grasping the underlying principles, and accelerating advancement.
Faced with the high degree of informatization of the new aircraft, they actively improved their training model. Establishing a "special situation response database" (特情处置数据库) is a prime example. Flight crew members digitally recorded the process of handling each special situation, and through analysis and study of the data, summarized the optimal response procedures in a format immediately comprehensible to all. Statistics show that through this method alone, pilots' simulated emergency response success rate improved by 30 percent.
Moreover, during the conversion period, the regiment's safety inspection team developed a special situation assessment safety early-warning system. They set dozens of safety monitoring indicators for various special situation assessments; once an anomaly appears, the system immediately issues a warning. In describing this innovation, a technician's eyes revealed a sense of pride.
"During the conversion process, everyone truly understood what 'knowledge overload' means, and genuinely grasped that in the information age, one must think even more." The regiment leadership explained that today, officers and soldiers actively recognize change, adapt to change, and seek change, striving to develop more real-combat "interfaces" (实战"接口") for the new equipment.
On one occasion, upon incidentally hearing that a particular tactic required rolling revision, the regiment leadership's eyes immediately lit up. In their view, was this not a precious opportunity for growth? By participating in this mission, officers and soldiers could cultivate systems-warfare thinking (体系作战思维) during the conversion phase, achieving close integration between conversion training and front-line combat readiness.
"The only fear is that the mission goes to someone else." They immediately volunteered to their superiors. Subsequently, with support at all levels, they simultaneously studied the characteristics of the new aircraft type and researched systems-warfare tactics, deepening their actual-combat awareness through mutual learning and exchange, and generating numerous new insights.
Pressure is both motivation and propulsion. In this new aircraft conversion, the regiment's performance across multiple training indicators set new records for conversion training among units of the same type. Faced with these new results, the officers and soldiers had no time to celebrate — they turned immediately to new missions and new challenges.