As the number of close reconnaissance by foreign military aircraft increases, Chinese fighter pilots who have just left school are assigned to carry out combat-ready patrols along China's southeast coast.
According to a report by CCTV's military channel's "Noon National Defense Military" program on January 14, a group of fighter pilots who had just completed their training for just one month were ordered to patrol the East China Sea and the South China Sea to drive away foreign military aircraft.
Chinese military experts say most of these planes are U.S. fighters, and the People's Liberation Army is getting newly graduated pilots to step up battlefield training to deal with foreign aircraft intrusion. "The new pilot has just completed the modification for a month, and received the training and transfer mission, which is the first combat readiness mission after I completed the modification, and it is still carried out in the form of a training and combat transfer," said Song Zihao, a 24-year-old J-16 fighter pilot, who received the order at that time because his fighter was closest to the scene, and as soon as he flew to the scene, he received a radar warning, "which shows that the foreign military aircraft has turned on the radar, scanned us in advance, countered it equally, and left not long after."
However, Song Zihao emphasized, "In fact, because we have been fighting on the front line since the beginning of the modification, we see it every day, so when the unexpected situation is really coming, I don't feel how panicked, or feel that it comes so quickly, because it happens around us all the time, and we are always ready."
On the other hand, Li Chao, a veteran J-16 pilot, said: "The police patrol belongs to the actual combat state, I bring actual combat weapons, and the weapons are in the state of ready to fire." He said that once he learned that the opponent's radar was searching for him, because the other side was two aggressive fighters, "If I rushed in, they could open fire on me at any time, which might affect the escalation of the situation, at this time I made the second decision that I ordered to turn off all the electronic equipment launched externally on board, disappear into the vast darkness at an ultra-low altitude, pass between the two planes, make a barrel rolling motion, and stand behind the tail of their wingman." The planes of the other side saw that we had the absolute initiative advantage, and then they did not dare to act rashly."
Zhou Chenming, a researcher at the Beijing-based military science "Yuanwang Think Tank," pointed out that since the beginning of December last year, US military aircraft have stepped up close aerial reconnaissance in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. This has forced the PLA to train more pilots who can respond to U.S. provocations. That's why, he says, so many young pilots are forced to perform missions that are simply beyond their capabilities. However, he stressed that because the Chinese side did not want the confrontation to escalate into a military conflict, the PLA pilots were very self-controlled.
According to CCTV, China has also recruited pilots from other combat zones to join police patrols in other areas. For example, J-16 pilots in the western theater are deployed to the southern coast for patrol duties, while J-20 pilots in the northern theater are sent to the eastern theater for night flight training to monitor the Taiwan Strait.
According to the Strategic Situational Awareness Program (SCSPI), a think tank owned by Peking University, the United States conducted about 680 close reconnaissance sorties over the South China Sea last year, including 68 in December alone.