Information technology is a must for military manufacturing industry to realize leap development. Presently, China's military manufacturing industry is going over from traditional "mechanic" to "digital military industry" with integration of information technology and networking, said Sun Laiyan, Secretary-General of Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

Sun said at a summit seminar of military industry enterprises on information technology that China will launch key model projects on digitization for military enterprises, establish basic digitization system, renovate traditional technique equipment with digital technology and strengthen fostering digital talents in military industry and establishing service system.

With an increasing input in information technology in recent years, hardware and software conditions are mature for China's military manufacturing industry in terms of information technology according to Wu Weiren, head of division of quality of science and technology under the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. Design departments have put an end to manual drawing, and single information technologies such as computer auxiliary design, technique design, manufacturing etc. have now become quite popular. Aviation and ship building and other industries have reaped quite some fruit in applying integration technology and virtual assembly, motion institution simulation, and space analysis have partially or completely been adopted for some products.

Sources say that currently information technology is developing rapidly in military industry of foreign countries. The United States has put the advanced manufacturing technologies into the development strategy and key technology plan for national defense. Japan and Germany worked out plan of intelligent manufacturing system and that of industrial basic technology research. As for China, military industry, used to be the trade that pioneered in applying information technology, the infrastructure construction of information technology, has come to form a considerable scale, and the level in the application of information technology project is now at the forefront of all domestic industries.

(People's Daily March 26, 2004)