Photos of the day: 6th LH Brigade, 42nd Group Army, Southern Theater Command conducts training in South China Sea

The Taiwan Strait is 180 kilometers wide separating ROC and PRC.   The WZ10 attack chopper has a range of 800 kilometers while the Z-8 heavy-lifer enjoys an additional 100 kilometers to a total of 900. The math is fairly straightforward here.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

PR Photos of the day: Vertical assault of an PLAAF airborne battalion combined arms battlegroup

Monday, January 18, 2010

15th Airborne Corps (ABC) is testing their vertical envelopment/air mobility capability

The 15th ABC's organic helicopter regiment was first revealed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake rescue work and then by a high profile fly-by during the 60th national day celebration.

It is now time for the 15th to test its newly found air mobility assault capability in a large military exercise. The advantage of air mobile assault over airdrop are many: ranging from entire unit delivery in one place--which immediately allows combat-readiness, precision resupply landings, to on-station fire support from helicopter gunships. In time, it will be interesting to see if a small portion of the 15th ABC will be converted into air-cavalry to enhance the corps' mission profile.

Airborne troops in training

(Source: China Military Online) 2010-01-18
http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/news-channels/photo-reports/2010-01/18/content_4119686.htm
Air-ground coordination

　 　Since the beginning of the training of the new year, a troop unit of the airborne force under the Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has organized the comprehensive exercise of live shell, actual-airdrop and actual-explosion strictly in accordance with the new Outline of Military Training and Evaluation. During the exercise, it stressed training on such subjects as command and control, airborne landing and airdrop, fire strike and comprehensive support, in a bid to enhance the core military capability of the troops. Shown in the pictures are some scenes of the troop unit in training.

　　By Wang Haitao

Editor:Yang Ru

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Next up at the Stride 2015 - Zhurihe A "red-vs-blue" confrontational exercise, 1st Heli-Assault Brigade, Nanjing MR

This is 1st Heli-Assault Brigade's first "baptism of fire" at Zhurihe, China's premier operational level "red vs blue" proving ground. It should be interesting to see how fine-tuned the PLA air assault tactics are after 10 years of trial and error in adopting this new combat operation. 

The 1st Heli-Assault Brigade (or 直升机机降突击旅 in Chinese) started as the 1st Heli-Assault battalion battle group in 2005, expanded into a full assault brigade in 2008. According to its commander 厉振彪 Li ZhenBiao, due to shortage of organic vertical assets, flatbed trucks were pressed into service to simulate airdrops. Their first military exercise was feasible only by 2009 when additional  helicopters found their way to the Nanjing MR.  Despite taking part at this year's Zhurihe, the outfit is still fairly new by PLA standards, doubts about their effectiveness will remain for some time to come.

Here are CCTV captures of its first military exercise in 2009