Chinese PLA Marines Conduct Live-fire Drills

The Chinese People's Liberation Army Marines have recently conducted a live-fire drill off the coast of south China's Guangdong Province.

The drill runs the complete gamut of Marine guidebook of strategy and tactics, from beach landing, beach-head defensive and offensive, and on-land penetration.

But Marines are tested more by the Nature than by their weaponry or equipment.

"Waves rock our amphibious tanks to unsteady firing positions. We have to capture the firing windows in accordance with the waves and the swaying of the tanks," says tank gunner Xie Fei.

The attacking side has to resort to overlapping firing for cover-up on the open sea in broad daylight. It has aimed at firing efficiency to better suppress the fire-backs from the defending side.

The attacking side has also to take on counter-attacks to its flanks by the defending side out at sea.

Scores of amphibious tanks and assault vehicles from the attacking side come out of their onshore hidings to fire at the warships of the defending side to roll back the counter-attacks from the surface. The land-based fires have not only fended off the surface counter-attacks, they have also reinforced the landing assault of the attacking side.

The two month-long drill has also challenged the PLA Marines with weapon-off five-kilometer swimming at choppy seas, weapon-on swim-across, super-distance trekking, landing assaults, reconnaissance, and blast-to-attack.

[BillPurkayastha]

The blue uniforms never made sense to me. Once they're ashore they need green/brown battlefield camouflage. The only explanation I have is that in a real war they will ditch these uniforms and use different, army style, ones.