The recent sky over a sea area of the South China Sea was darkly clouded with the rolling waves surging as high as 4 meters. It was exactly against such a backdrop that a destroyer flotilla of the South China Sea Fleet of the PLA Navy staged an anti-ship firing exercise in formation. Despite the poor visibility of less than 3 nautical miles, all the three destroyers participating in the exercise scored accurate hits.

The result of the test demonstrated that 97% or above of participating officers and men had a good grasp of the skills of equipment control and weapon operation in adverse weathers and under tricky sea conditions. By now, the new mode of all-member and multi-capability coordinated operation under complicated conditions it developed has been successfully applied to training practice.

Since kicking off the training season this year, the flotilla proceeded from building up the overall operational capacity, focused on solving the key and difficult problems existing between fighting positions, departments, and ships during the coordinated training, and attached great importance to uplifting the coordination capacity while helping the officers and men to enhance their individual quality.

Moreover, the flotilla would see to it that adverse weather conditions were picked for going out to unfamiliar sea areas to conduct trainings, during which dangerous situations were arranged and close-to-real operation settings were laid in order to hone the troops' capability in fighting coordinated operations.

(PLA Daily April 7, 2008)