On April 25th, 2015, an earthquake struck Nepal, and the helicopter of Luhang flew over the Himalayas to participate in the rescue, which passed on the friendship of the people of China to the people of Nepal. The picture shows the delivery of materials in the earthquake zone in Nepal. Fu Lei/photo
How low is the ultra-low altitude? Some people say that it is "the height of a tree".
Downward, there are tanks and armored vehicles on the ground, and upward, there are fixed-wing aircraft and missiles. Only the gap of "the height of a tree" was left to the Army Aviation.
In 1986, in the prelude to the "One Million Disarmament", China started to set up the Army Aviation Force. Today, the Chinese Army Air Force has gone through 30 years. In the past 30 years, this newly established new combat arm of the army has gradually become one of the backbone forces of the Chinese army to realize nonlinear three-dimensional mobile operations from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong.
Today, 30 years later, when China’s army is once again opening the curtain of reform, people can’t help asking: Can we win at the height of a tree?
30 years of hardship and burden
In 1986, when the China People’s Liberation Army announced the formation of the Army Aviation Force, our international counterparts had already left us too far.
In 1939, the world’s first practical helicopter was successfully tested and began to be widely used in the military field. On the Vietnam battlefield after World War II, helicopters have become the main battle equipment of the US Army. The US military has invested more than 10 types of helicopters on the battlefield in Vietnam, covering armed attacks, aerial reconnaissance, and support transportation, with a total of more than 400 helicopters, which can achieve tactical coordination between helicopters and combat classes.
Today, the number of US military helicopters in active service is close to 7,000. According to the public data in 2015, the number of active helicopters in the Russian army exceeds 2,000, and it has the largest helicopter model in the world: Mi-26 heavy helicopter. This helicopter once showed strong air support ability in the rescue of Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan.
In the China Army in 1986, the number of our helicopters was 79. And basically imported from abroad, the model is complex. China is so big that it is almost impossible to build a complete helicopter.
In the 1980s, the new military revolution in the world rose quietly, and major innovations took place in military theory, military system, weapons and equipment and war forms. China’s Luhang took off in the wave of military reform in the world.
In order to solve the urgent need for equipment, the Army Aviation Force introduced armed helicopters and transport helicopters from France and Russia successively, and on this basis began the road of independent innovation of "equipping one generation, developing one generation, pre-researching one generation and exploring one generation".
In 1985, Deng Xiaoping, then chairman of the Central Military Commission, announced to the world that he would disarm 1 million people. It was against this background that the Central Military Commission decided to set up the Army Air Force the following year.
A paper order came down, and Colonel Xing Xigui, the head of a transport regiment of the Air Force, changed his blue air force trousers and became a head of the Army Air Force. He took several backbones from the Air Force, borrowed 10 bungalows from neighboring troops, and inserted the flag of Luhang: "This is the regimental headquarters!" There is no night flight facility on the ground, so the ground crew painted the lantern in red, yellow and green with paint to guide the helicopter to fly at night instead of the runway light. Every night flight, the ground crew will drive a truck and put lanterns along the way.
At the Luhang Training Base in Shanxi, more than a dozen sheepfolds were converted into offices, and even the tap water was not installed, pilot training and enrollment began. In the morning, I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and colonel and senior colonel lined up to fetch water. Someone summed up a few jingles: "A few rooms are lonely, there is no camp gate and no road, entertainment depends on walking, 10 officers and men live together, and all sleep in bunk beds."
In the past 30 years, almost every development of the Chinese Army Aviation has been "the most beautiful retrograde".
In 1999, in order to deepen the reform of national defense and the army and accelerate the transformation of the army, the whole army was reduced by 500 thousand again, and the number of military academies was reduced from 100 to 80. At the same time, the Central Military Commission decided to set up the Army Aviation Academy, which is the only comprehensive college newly built in this disarmament process.
In 2003, the whole army reduced 200,000 posts again, and the General Staff Aviation Bureau was officially renamed as the General Staff Aviation Department, which changed from performing the functions of the leading organ of the army to performing the functions of the second department of the General Staff Department, and added technical support and scientific research flight test institutions such as the Military Agency and the Flight Test Brigade.
In July 2013, the Central Military Commission defined the main tasks of the military reform from 2013 to 2015. Under the condition of further optimizing the military structure, the Army Aviation once again increased its posts. It is also these four landmark "retrogrades" that the Chinese Army Air Force took off with a heavy load.
The first 30 years.
An armed helicopter violently shook and landed in a paddy field in the countryside of southeast Jiangxi from the air of 1800 meters, riding on the ridge impartially. Test pilots Zhang Zhiqiang and Zhang Yunlei got out of danger, lit a cigarette for each other and waited quietly for the rescue team.
Few people know that this forced landing of paddy fields in 2007 has well preserved China’s first special armed helicopter — — The prototype and test data of Wuzhi-10. Five years later, China’s first dedicated armed helicopter was born.
On the day of installation, a number of aviation equipment experts were in tears at the scene. They all remember that at the critical moment when the introduction of the engine of the Zhi-10 helicopter gunship was blocked and the development of the whole helicopter was in a dilemma, Luhang made a decisive decision to rely on domestic independent design and finalize the design, successfully organized and completed the engine development with independent intellectual property rights, overcame the technical difficulties of the whole helicopter weight reduction optimization, broke the foreign blockade in two years and achieved a great victory of self-reliance.
At the same time, Luhang began to explore ways to improve and tap the potential of active equipment on the "Zhi-9" platform, and implemented three major improvements, which met the operational needs of armed helicopters in different historical periods of Luhang and provided a solid foundation for the transformation of Luhang from auxiliary support force to main battle assault force.
In the past 30 years, the Chinese Army Air Force has not only equipped domestic special armed helicopters, but also trained a large number of aviation pilots, which are close to the world-class in flight technology and level.
In order to "make up lessons" and shorten the gap as soon as possible, the army aviation has made full use of its horsepower. In 17 years, the training base has trained nearly 3,000 qualified aviation pilots, the flight training time has increased fourfold, and the number of trainees has soared tenfold. Therefore, it has to adopt the training mode of "three shifts" and "multi-point and multi-purpose in one field".
At most, the cookhouse squad has to cook 8 meals a day and carry them to the airport to ensure that teachers and students eat and then fly. The coach helicopter "Zhi-11" produced by China itself was directly installed in the army after it was manufactured, and it was taught while flying. The coaching staff didn’t have enough crew members, so they put the female soldiers on the ground and took on the task of maintaining the helicopter with the male soldiers.
China’s army aviation, which is catching up slowly and developing at a high speed, has undergone earth-shaking changes. In 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake rescue came to a critical moment. At that time, Cai Yougu, the head of a certain aviation regiment, took a single hovering way to connect several wounded people trapped in desperate situations to helicopters. The air corridor opened by Luhang has rekindled the hope of life for many affected people. To this end, Luhang also paid the price of his life, and Qiu Guanghua’s crew died heroically.
In recent years, the manned spaceflight project has given China Luhang a try. On the prairie of Siziwangqi, Inner Mongolia, the search and rescue helicopter is always the first to land next to the Shenzhou spacecraft, and send the most timely help to the heroes returning from outer space.
Over the past 30 years, the Army Air Force has formed a series of helicopter types, such as transportation, armed forces and service support, which are active in the ultra-low altitude of "the height of a tree" and play an increasingly important role in the army’s combat sequence.
"Write the poem in the blue sky and pin your figure on the white clouds." This is a poem written by Xing Shuhua, the first female pilot of Lu Hang. Today, the first batch of five female helicopter gunship pilots have been tempered by wind and rain for more than a year, and their wings have gradually grown and formed combat effectiveness.
30 years of innovation leap
In May 2014, northern Jiangxi. A helicopter stopped in the air and fell like an iron weight.
In more than 10 seconds from the height of 200 meters to the landing of the helicopter, the pilot pulled up the joystick weighing more than 100 kilograms with his hands to control the helicopter to rotate and land.
This is not an accident, but a 15-day first flight special course training for the Army Air Force. The training courses include difficult special situations such as engine stopping in the air and tail rotor failure, aiming at improving the pilot’s special situation handling ability and the battlefield survivability of Army helicopters. Participating in the training are a variety of active models such as domestic new main battle equipment Zhi-10 and light teaching equipment Zhi-11.
In recent years, the Army Air Force has always insisted on proceeding from actual combat needs, keeping a close eye on combat tasks and opponents, insisting on how to build troops and how to train soldiers, and developing and training what is needed in combat. It has successively organized activities such as training for aviation captains, pilot training for tactical research and training, and training for tactical application of new weapons and new ammunition, and creatively organized world-wide special training courses such as helicopter single-engine parking, taxi landing, double-engine parking, rotation landing and tail rotor failure landing, actively responding to the new situation of changing combat style and upgrading weapons and equipment, solving the problems of insufficient command level and low tactical training level of aviation units, effectively improving the core military capabilities of aviation units, and promoting the aviation units from fine flying to good fighting.
In terms of tactics, the Army Air Force studied and discussed the application theory of alpine plateau, sea, mountain, desert, urban warfare and night battle, and organized several inspection drills. In particular, in 2013, the Army Air Force organized a live-fire drill codenamed "Assault-2013", which was the first time that our army conducted a live-fire drill with the Army Air Force as the main assault force, and it was also the largest tactical research and discussion activity since the establishment of the Army Air Force.
"Assault-2013" mainly rehearsed six typical operations, such as fire cover, close fire support, special assault, wing-side aircraft landing, fire interception and leapfrog support, during the army aviation assault under the information conditions. The participating troops include land and air brigades and regiments from the former Jinan, Nanjing, Guangzhou and other military regions, as well as more than 3,000 naval and air force units, using more than 100 helicopters of various types and large-scale equipment such as multi-type ships, armor, artillery and fighters. The exercise verified a number of new tactical achievements, such as multi-aircraft side-by-side fire-gathering attack, and actually shot many types of test bombs. China’s first dedicated armed helicopter also launched an air-to-air missile for the first time and successfully intercepted low-altitude targets.
After 30 years’ unremitting efforts, the Army Air Force has also stepped out of a road of equipment progressive upgrading with adaptive modification, specialized development and serial development, forming a relatively rich series of air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons. The Army Air Force first solved the long-standing problem of "organic non-ammunition" of multiple aircraft types, and then independently developed a helicopter-specific air-to-ground missile. The guidance system expanded from a single wired system to multiple guidance methods. The equipped air-to-air missiles form a series in range and guidance mode, and the helicopter-borne rockets adopt various calibers and warheads, which have the ability to strike various targets.
In the past 30 years, the Army Aviation Force has successively completed the development and installation of domestic helicopters such as Zhi-9 series, Zhi-8 series, Zhi-11, Zhi-10 and Zhi-19, and basically built a main battle equipment system with second-generation equipment as the main body and third-generation equipment as the backbone; Overcome the difficulties in the development of multiple engines and initially break through the power bottleneck.
In the five years of "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" alone, the number of helicopters in Army Aviation is equivalent to the sum of the growth in the first 25 years of Army Aviation. When the curtain of military reform is once again opened, the Chinese army aviation will also usher in a new take-off.
