The US and Chinese air forces are stepping up their training to prepare for a potential showdown with each other

• The US and Chinese air forces have both intensified their training for aerial combat.
• US Air Force leaders are concerned about the growing size and capability of China's aviation force.
• The US is still seen as having the edge, but more realistic training has helped China close the gap.

The US and Chinese air forces have intensified their training, increasing the complexity and scale of their exercises in response to what many on each side see as a growing possibility of conflict with the other.

China's air force has moved away from scripted exercises, seeking more realism and more opportunities for its pilots to learn from failure. The US Air Force has also added more complicated scenarios to its drills and is emphasizing training with allies and for expeditionary operations, reflecting US expectations that a war in the Pacific will require fighting over long distances against an opponent trying to hold it at bay.

Efforts to make Chinese air force exercises more realistic are relatively recent and have picked up under Xi Jinping, who took power at the end of 2012. Upon assuming control of China's military, known as the People's Liberation Army, Xi "admonished the PLA and told them they had to conduct realistic combat training," said Michael Dahm, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

China's 2019 defense white paper, titled "China's National Defense in the New Era," described the missions and tasks of the air force "as transitioning from territorial air defense to 'offensive and defensive operations,'" and the service's leadership has continued reforms "to improve the force's ability to accomplish joint warfighting tasks," according to the US Defense Department's most recent report on the Chinese military, released in October.

That transition is reflected in the development of pilot training, which now includes opponents who are better at fighting back. Over the past five to seven years, Dahm said, there has been "a greater employment of 'Blue forces'" — pilots acting as opponents to 'Red,' or friendly, forces — during Chinese air force exercises.

The first "Blue force" unit is based at Cangzhou Flight Test and Training Base in northeastern China, which for decades has been the site of elite pilot training. That "Blue force" acts as "a realistic simulated opponent in 'free air combat training,'" initially mimicking Soviet tactics before switching to replicating Taiwanese and US tactics, a 2016 report by the Rand Corporation think tank said.

"Up until five or seven years ago, 'Red' usually won in these force-on-force exercises," Dahm, a retired US Navy intelligence officer who served as assistant naval attaché in Beijing, told Business Insider.

Since Xi's admonishment, Dahm added, "'Blue' has begun to win and has been winning quite consistently, really teaching Chinese military hard lessons in the conduct of modern military operations."

The emphasis on more realistic training is visible in the Golden Helmet competition, which was first held in 2011 and is meant to "improve and assess pilots' skills and capabilities in combat conditions," the Rand report said. A primary goal of the competition has been to increase the number of young pilots involved because they are seen as more willing to break from "a follow-the-plan mindset" than older pilots who are used to scripted training.

Golden Helmet has evolved over the years, growing to include different types of fighter jets, larger "dogfights" between more aircraft, and drills for missions other than air-to-air combat. Other units, such as early-warning aircraft and electronic countermeasures, have participated to better simulate combined operations. Political education and morale-focused elements have also been added.

Official commentary makes clear that Golden Helmet is seen as having real training value, according to the Rand report, which cited one 2012 participant as saying, "The most important thing is not the result, but the process. I have learned more in a day of confrontation in the air than in a year of flight training."

'We're making it high-end'

Golden Helmet has been compared to a US Air Force competition known as William Tell, which was designed to test combat skills. It began in 1954 — after the intense air combat of the Korean War — and held every two years through 1996. With the exception of an anniversary event in 2004, it was halted until this year.

The 2023 competition, held in Georgia in September, featured one-on-one dogfighting, air-combat maneuvers, an aerial-gunnery event, and integration of different fighter types to defend a piece of airspace — all of which reflect Air Force concerns about the growing ability of peer-level rivals, chiefly China, to deny the US control the air.

"We started it in 1954 out of a direct response to a peer adversary challenging us in air superiority," said Gen. Mark Kelly, who oversees US Air Force combat training as head of Air Combat Command. "We stopped it 19 years ago, greatly out of a perception that we didn't have a competitor in air superiority."

"Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, we knew and the world knew that if anyone got airborne and went to face off with the United States Air Force in air superiority there was going to be an ax-murdering on the other side," Kelly said at the Air and Space Forces Association conference in September.

Today, adversaries "feel they can compete," Kelly said, adding that the Air Force owes its airmen "all the highest-end training and the reps and sets we can get them, because we also know from high-end exercises and also other studies that not all of our airmen will come back from a peer fight."

High-end training has been a priority in the Pacific, where US pilots are spending more time in close proximity to Chinese forces. Major exercises have been moved into the region and expanded to provide training for complex, long-range operations. The Air Force's concept for dispersing its forces, known as agile combat employment, is a growing part of those drills.

"In the past, when we've done some of those large, coalition-type exercises, sometimes the level of complexity is reduced so that everybody can participate," Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of US Pacific Air Forces, said at the conference in September. "We're not doing that anymore. We're making it high-end. If you want to play, you come and you show up and you execute."

Wilsbach, who will be Kelly's successor at Air Combat Command, said recent exercises have been "extremely high-end," pointing to this summer's Northern Edge, which took place outside of Alaska for the first time and focused on coordination and synchronization and dispersed operations in the Pacific, and Talisman Sabre, which was the biggest version ever and focused on "agile operations" with fifth-generation jets at austere bases across northern Australia.

During exercise Pitch Black in northern Australia last summer, "we had almost 20 nations participating in a night high-end surface-to-air missile takedown — one of the most difficult air missions you can do, especially at night," Wilsbach said.

"It was super complex" and "really well done and well executed, and we're seeing that on exercise after exercise," he added.

The US Air Force is still seen as having an edge over China because of the experience of its pilots, the capabilities of its jets, and its network of allies and partners, but continued investments and reforms mean China's air force is "rapidly catching up to Western air forces," the Pentagon said in its recent report.

"This trend is gradually eroding longstanding and significant US military technical advantages" over China "in the air domain," the report said.

Realistic assessments of pilot performance, and honesty about their shortcomings, have been important for closing that gap. "The Chinese military has embraced this idea that they need to experience failure in their exercises in order to improve their processes, improve their training, and improve their concepts of operations," Dahm said.