First LH helicopter-to-helicopter, Red-vs-Blue, air combat exercise

After forming the PLA's first Air Assault Battalion in November 2009 (here) the 7th LH (Army Aviation) Regiment, Jinan MR, conducted its first large-scale helicopter-to-helicopter, Red-vs-Blue air combat exercise today.  Clearly, the PLA high command envisions an escort/air defense role for the light Z-9G. Here's the link to the PLA Daily article on this exercise (here)

And here is our early blog entry on the Z-9G's Air-to-Air configuration.

Saturday, August 15, 2009
Z-9G Attack Helicopter in Air-to-Air Configuration

Recently open source internet images have been seen of the Z-9G mounting the TY-90 lightweight air-to-air missile in two 4-missile racks.

The TY-90 ("TY" stands for TianYan, or ) is a short range air-to-air variant of the Chinese QW-2 shoulder-fired IR-seeking missile. Manufacturer's specifications on display at an arms expo indicate that the TY-90 possesses an all-aspect cooled Indium Antimonide IR seeker that is optimized for anti-helicopter engagements in a low-contrast nap-of-the-earth (NOE) environment.

to read the entire blog entry (here)

PLA Daily Photos

Air-landing drill for combined battalion
( Source: PLA Daily ) 2009-November-30 16:38

http://eng.mod.gov.cn/DefenseNews/2009-11/30/content_4108157.htm

Not long ago, under the cooperation of an army aviation regiment, a motorized infantry brigade of the Nanjing Military Area Command organized, for the first time, a real air-landing operation for a combined battalion. This is the first time in the history of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for an organic combined battalion to implement air-landing operation drill, which has important significance for uplifting the air-landing operation capability of the PLA.

Yuan Hao, commander of a battalion, said that the changes from single ground operation to air-ground joint operation, from single-arm command to ground-air joint command and from single basic training of air-landing to full-process drill of air-landing of combined battalion, made him feel unprecedented pressure.

“In the future integrated joint operation, the combat strength becomes increasingly diversified and integrated, the combat scale tends to be downsized and the role of air-landing operation of battalion-level units inclines to prominent day by day,” said brigade commander Yu Xiaoming. During the drill, the battalion mainly exercised such 7 subjects as command and collaboration, loading and cargo-arranging, communication and liaison as well as flight in formation, constructing an information-based commanding model for air-landing operation and exploring a new way for the full-process training of air-landing operation.

During the drill, more than 10 arm-elements from the infantry, artillery, engineer, chemical defense, signal and maintenance troops joined their hands in the operation and the information between the air-landing element, the single army aviation aircraft, the army aviation element and the support element were connected and linked in real time with the help of such communication tools as a new-type tactical radio and the ground-air collaborative radio, realizing the full-system, full-process and integrated command and control.

By Cheng Yongliang and Chen Chao

Editor : Luo Hui