More information surfaced on the South-West Mission Military Exercise 2009

During the exercise, A PLA Battalion Battle-Group drawn from the 149th Mech Infantry, Division, 13th Group Army, Chengdu MR was attached by a PLAAF ground control liaison from the 44th fighter division. Elements of the PLA 2nd LH regiment and a SpOps team from the Chengdu MR were also present. The two week long exercise started at 21:00 on October 19 with the 31st Motorized Infantry Division, 14th Group Army, Chengdu MR as the acting "bad guy."

The goal of this exercise was to improve the PLA's ground-air joint night operations (here) (here) but portraying the J-10 as a rocket-firing-mud-mover seems to be a poor PR move. The poor face paint and lack of the basic camouflage techniques are also noted.

Deputy cmdr of the PLAAF 44th Fighter division shows off his digital ground controller relay van with its offset antennas.






Battlegroup Cmdr, Yang Yanfei.

Note the poor face paint on those SpOps guys.