Aircraft of an aviation unit of the Nanjing Military Area Command on combat readiness duty during the Spring Festival.

The fighters doing the loops and rolls at 10,000m over the sea suddenly swooped down in high-speed dive to less than 100m before they skimmed above the sea waves. This is a spectacular scene the reporters saw recently at an exercise staged over the sea by a fighter regiment of the air force of the Nanjing Military Area Command.

In future air battles over the sea, the air fleet on long-range raid mission are easy to be picked up by "enemy" radars.

In view of this fact, this regiment has, in its training, prioritized "stealth" drill of its fighter planes and pilots under complex electromagnetic environment, and on the basis of skillfully grasping ultra low-altitude flying technique, the pilots were also required to study and drill on penetration tactics so as to gradually build up the ultra low-altitude, long-duration and long-range penetration capability of its fighter formations.

With this objective in mind, this regiment has intensified the ultra low-altitude flying training since the kick-off of the annual training program this year.

So far it has organized confrontational exercises in partnership with radar troops, and also organized emergency ferrying flight, maximum range flight and maximum combat radius flight in strange air spaces in raining and foggy days or other changeable weather conditions. In this way it has effectively boosted the long-range trans-regional mobile operational capability of its troops.

(PLA Daily February 26, 2007)