People's Liberation Navy - Surface Force Training
The escort in the Gulf of Aden that has lasted for 12 years has become the best training ground for the Chinese Navy to normalize overseas training. Each batch of escort formations has gone to sea for more than 200 days, with a cumulative voyage of more than 100,000 nautical miles, and safely escorted dozens of Chinese and foreign ships. . In addition to driving off the pirates, you will also face various special maritime situations that are unknown or even hostile. There are also close cooperation between international escort formations, visits to supplies from friendly countries, and joint exercises, allowing young warships to withstand tropical seas. The severe test of long-term operation has allowed officers and soldiers to expand their international horizons and accumulate actual combat experience, and their ocean-going combat capabilities have rapidly improved.
Whether it is a new ship that has been in service for less than a year or an old ship that is about to be decommissioned, the situation of going to sea during the day for training and returning to port at night has long disappeared. Naval ships have been "at sea" for long voyages, high intensity, and multi-disciplinary combat. Training has become the norm. It is these innovative training ideas and practical ocean training that have allowed the Chinese Navy to rapidly form new combat capabilities while continuously receiving new types of ships.
Types of Training
As of 2007, the PLAN organizes surface-force training into three types: common training subjects, technical specialty training, and tactics training.
Common Training Subjects
All officers and enlisted crew members must pass a specified set of common training subjects to meet their basic training requirements, which includes:
- Common military regulations
- Vessel deployment
- Damage control
- Seamanship
- Vessel repairs below the surface
- Camouflage and concealment
- Light weapons
- Physical training and swimming
- At-sea practical training
In addition to the basic training subjects noted above, each surface vessel has its own individual and group training subjects.
Technical Specialty Training
Technical specialty training consists of the subjects that individual officers and enlisted sailors need to carry out their own duties. The different types of training include:
- Navigation
- Missiles and guns
- Underwater weapons
- Communications
- Radar
- Sonar
- Electronic countermeasures
- Electro-mechanical
- Sails and ropes
- Chemical defense
- Health
- Command-and-control
- On-board aviation services
Technical specialty training for individual classes of service ships also includes the following:
- Ocean reconnaissance
- Salvage
- Medical care
- Transport and supply
- Ocean surveillance and mapping
- At-sea engineering
Tactics Training
Tactics training consists of the principles and methods for maritime combat and is given to command personnel of all levels, as well as taskforce headquarters and units. Combat training is divided into the following two types:
Training Procedures and Methods
The PLAN divides its surface-force training into the following two phases in accordance with the Outline of Military Training and Evaluation (OMTE):
- Technical and tactics basic training
- Combined-arms training
Technical and tactics basic training is conducted at one of the fleet vessel training centers or training bases, or during task-force training, and includes vessel organization, management, navigation, defense, and combat training subjects.
Combined-arms training usually begins after individual vessel technical and tactics training is completed and is organized between different classes of vessels or different PLAN branches. As the annual training cycle progresses through the calendar year, surface-force training shifts from shore-based and shallow-water to deepwater training, from simple to complex training, and from separate training by individuals and individual functional branches to combined training for different functional branches on the same vessel, and from single vessel to multiple vessel training.
