In late August, an artillery brigade in the Guangzhou Military Area Command conducted an exercise to test its equipment support capacity. The brigade is applying more and more information technology to boost its equipment support capacity. In the exercise, a piece of artillery was directly hit by an "enemy" strike. Then, a request for technical support was sent through a communications network to the monitor in the equipment maintenance shelter of the commanding center. Three technical experts formed a solution based on the information about the damage of the weapon and then sent it back online to the rush repair unit in the battlefield. Twenty minutes later, the hit weapon got repaired and could be used again in the battle.

　　Things were different in the year before last year when, in an exercise, its troops' offensive operations were hindered by the inadequate equipment support. The Party committee of the artillery brigade learned a lesson from its failures in the equipment support and decided to make a great change by using more advanced technologies. The equipment section of the brigade established cooperation ties with military and civilian research institutions and their cooperation resulted in 28 technological achievements including the field commanding shelter, the field artillery maintenance examination trailer and the ammunition accuracy support system. In 2003, it also borrowed 14 technological achievements from fellow troops. All these greatly upgraded the brigade's equipment informationization level.

　　The brigade has built a field equipment automation commanding system that reacts rapidly and works in a dynamic environment, realizing equipment commanding automation at the brigade, battalion and company levels. Emergency field maintenance can be conducted very quickly with the help of a number of field rush repair vehicles which keep the same pace with the troops and provide technical support to various equipment. For example, two pieces of artillery were partially damaged in the exercise, the technicians on the rush repair vehicles conducted a rapid examination using the field artillery examination trailer and then changed some parts without dismantling the weapons. The two guns suffering a breakdown got recovered in a very short time and engaged in the battle again.

　　By Huang Jicheng and Fan Jianying

　　（September 16，PLA Daily）