In 2013 in the annual air combat contest of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force, three of the five winning units came from the AF No.1 Division, the defending champion. However, just two years before, this military division suffered a major defeat. How did they turn themselves around?

    Agonizing Loss

    In October 2011 at an airport in Shandong Province, Gu Shengdong, the unit chief, boarded his fighter with confidence. He even felt a tinge of pity for his rivals, because his aircraft was better in the beyond-visual-range air combat performance. He assumed he would only need to intercept a target and launch a missile before his rival saw him. Then the combat would be over.

    In the first flight, Gu turned on his radar as planned, but the screen was unexpectedly blank. His fighter was "blind". The opponents took them by surprise.

    "At first I thought the radar was out of order. Then I realized the other side had played a trick," a pilot who monitored the dog fight from the ground said later.

    When the combat was over, they were surprised by the outcome. The team of eight veteran pilots was defeated with a score of 59-166. They carried out 22 effective attacks, but the "enemy" made 57 as well as most of the first strikes. "We were obviously disadvantaged in short-range air combat. And we were no better in mid-range combat in which we believed we had the advantage," said Division Combat Commander Liu Wennan.

    Was it because their equipment was inferior, they wondered. Their sophisticated heavy fighters had the latest technologies. The aircraft performance was outstanding, especially in beyond-visual-range combat, and their radar and missile technology was significantly superior.

    Was their training inadequate? They couldn't see how. The division was the first to be equipped with new generation fighters. They had repeated victories in earlier confrontations, rarely missing their targets. Their pilots had been honored on several occasions as "air combat experts".

    So what went wrong? Insufficient command of the aircraft information system was suspected. Studying the issue from the broad perspective of comprehensive air force training, they confirmed the problem. It was a reflection of outdated ideas and habits clashing with new combat training methods that were moving ever closer to actual combat.

    Their summary report stated: "Our defeat was caused by self-admiration and complacency. We lost because we were inadequate in learning and research."