Personnel Achieve "Grab-and-Go" Cross-Regional Support — A Naval Air Station Explores New Model for Aviation Materiel Procurement
A Naval Air Station Explores New Model for Aviation Materiel Procurement —— Personnel Achieve "Grab-and-Go" Cross-Regional Support
■ Zhu Yunkun, Wang Hao
During the height of summer, personnel from the aviation materiel section (航材股) of a People's Liberation Army Navy air station fell into formation and boarded vehicles, heading to the front lines of an exercise and training event. Unlike the previous "moving-house-style" (搬家式) accompanying support, personnel precisely configured materiel according to mission requirements using standardized transfer-and-storage containers, rapidly completed loading and transport, and significantly improved deployment efficiency.
Station leadership explained that cross-regional support has shed the complexity and chaos caused by transporting large-item materiel, owing to a new aviation materiel procurement model they explored in close alignment with combat training mission requirements.
Last year, the station's aviation materiel section received orders on multiple occasions to provide accompanying support for off-site exercises and training events. Faced with heavy materiel loading demands, personnel planned ahead and transported in groups, and successfully completed all tasks through a rigorous and meticulous work style and close, coordinated cooperation. During after-action reviews, many personnel reflected that the traditional loading method had low space utilization and slow deployment speed, and was increasingly ill-suited to the demands of major missions.
"Cross-regional redeployment support must move faster and supply more precisely." The chief of the station's aviation materiel section explained that in recent years, as joint inter-service exercise and training missions have continued to increase, the contradiction between tight aviation materiel supply timelines and the large volume of materiel to be transferred has become increasingly prominent, making it imperative to innovate the aviation materiel procurement and support model.
To this end, the station, building on a summary of its own support experience, innovatively introduced a "mission module" (任务模块) management model and established a dedicated mission materiel depot. Working in collaboration with aviation units and academies, they optimized aviation materiel transfer lists for aircraft of different sortie types, and custom-designed three types of standardized transfer-and-storage containers tailored to transport platforms, achieving "independent packaging, designated storage, and immediate retrieval" of mission materiel. They also committed specialized technical personnel to develop a mission transfer aviation materiel information management system, implementing full-time, full-domain dynamic control over aviation materiel components in the mission depot.
Not long ago, after the station received orders for simultaneous accompanying support missions at four locations, it leveraged the new support model to effectively shorten materiel transfer times — but new problems arose in quick succession: the old approach of "bring more for stability, ship everything from home base" still constrained support quality and efficiency to a certain degree. To resolve this problem entirely, they broke with the old thinking of "doing everything themselves," and jointly established with units including an Air Force formation and a Navy brigade nine mutual-aid zones for the same aircraft type and four industrial-sector cooperation zones. Flexibly implementing materiel supply according to the principle of "nearest and most convenient" (就近就便) not only significantly improved support efficiency but also greatly enhanced materiel allocation flexibility.
Entering the aviation materiel section's warehouse, various types of materiel are arranged in an orderly manner according to the principle of "one item per container, one category per container, one mission per module" (一件一箱、一类一箱、一任务一模块), better aligned with mission requirements. A warehouse custodian remarked with feeling: "Now, when we carry out cross-regional support, we have truly achieved 'light forward deployment, rapid resupply, and grab-and-go.'"
Station leadership stated that in the next phase, they will continue to expand the applicable scope of standardized transfer-and-storage containers, work with more sister units to jointly refine the cross-regional accompanying support cooperation mechanism, drive the transformation of aviation materiel support from "experience-based" (经验型) to "precision-based" (精准型), and consolidate the equipment support foundation for units to accomplish long-range combat training missions.