Asian Defence News

Marines of the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) are about to leave the training base for their barracks after the trans-MAC winter training

The marines of the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLAN), who just concluded their trans-MAC winter training, fully withdrew from the stationed training site and started their return trip to their barracks, as the last train carrying the personnel and equipment left the platform around 16:00 on March 18, 2014.

　　It was on February 20 that thousands of personnel and hundreds of vehicles of the Marine Corps of the PLAN crossed military area commands (MAC) and reached a training base north of the Great Wall to conduct cold region training. During the training, the Marine Corps organized its troop units in accordance with the special characteristics and rules of cold region combat training to conduct drills on such subjects as long-distance mobility, field survival, firepower strike, actual-troop confrontation, and so forth in a rigid environment.

　　The Marine Corps adopted a non-preplan independent confrontation model to conduct full-course inspection and evaluation of the troop units’ urban combat operation capability, in a bid to effectively elevate the full-region operational level under complicated conditions. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps also launched amphibious armored equipment performance inspection under rigid conditions and collected 100-odd sets of performance verification data with clear understanding initially achieved with regards to the traits of the amphibious armored equipment’s performance in cold regions.

　　According to Li Xiaoyan, commander of the winter training and deputy chief of staff of the South China Sea Fleet of the PLAN, this is the first time for the Marine Corps of the PLAN to conduct organic training in a cold region with some successful experience accomplished. “We will continue to organize the Marine Corps to conduct actual-combat training in complicated environments,” Li added.