Daring to make self-criticism gradually becomes a tradition of military exercise

　　In the “Queshan 2006” military exercise held in 2006, a division of the Jinan Military Area Command (MAC) dared to find out its weakness and thus it was praised by the media as “looking for a bone in an egg”.

　　Three years later, it is not strange to make profound self-criticism after a military exercise. And making self-criticism on problems exposed in the exercise becomes an important part at the post-exercise summary meeting.

　　After the “Stride 2009” series of exercises, 4 main participating divisions and the exercise directing department all devoted a good deal of space in their summary reports to sum up the problems found in the exercises.

　　The problems ranged from big problems like conservative and backward fighting principle and fatal defect of technological equipment to small problems like mistake in command of the striking link of a company and the prevention of beriberi.

　　In the exercise comments, the directing departments of some MACs used only 10 minutes to sum up their achievements, but spent 60 minutes to speak about the problems, making some related persons nervous and unease.

　　A staff officer of a participating troop unit used plain language in the radio communication and sent a short message to inquire the location of the basic command post of the division with military mobile phone. But this was monitored by the technological reconnaissance troop unit of the MAC. Finally, the contents of communication were displayed in public at the summary meeting, greatly shocking the participating troops.

　　The marching space between the troops of a participating division was too big on the way of long-distance maneuver and the head and the tail of the troops couldn’t coordinate. Seeing this situation, the exercise directing department immediately organized the “Blue Army” to implement harass and fought the “Red Army” in surprise, putting the “Red Army” in a most embarrassing predicament.

　　A commander didn’t found the trap designed by the directing department and made a wrong decision based on a wrong judgment of the battlefield situation, triggering his troops to be caught in the ambush. As a result, the commander was seriously criticized by the directing department.

　　Through repeated comments, overwhelming assault, upright image-sentinels and tank square couldn’t be seen any longer, but they were concealed in the grass. The atmosphere of actual war became stronger and stronger with the progress of the exercise.

　　All the troop units adopted an attitude of active rectification towards problems exposed in the exercises. A division of the Guangzhou MAC stayed at the exercise site after the exercise and didn’t return to its barracks until all exposed problems were well analyzed and tackled.

　　“Compared with summing up the experience, summing up lessons and mistakes is even more important. But this requires courage,” said a professor from the Shijiazhuang Army Command College of the PLA, “It is not shameful to make self-criticism.”

　　By Li Yun and Liu Feng’an