On the afternoon of January 27, a motorized infantry brigade of the Lanzhou Military Area Command stationed at a peripheral area of the Tenggeli Desert was scheduled to hold an artillery live firing exercise. However no sooner had the brigade started the firing than a sandstorm began to sweep through the area.

　　With such a bad weather, should the firing exercise proceed as scheduled? "Proceed according to the No.3 Preplan!" Mao Shaohua, an artillery commander, resolutely gave the order. At the word of command, the officers and men immediately occupied their battle stations and got ready to blast away with their deadly guns.

　　"Fire!" Mao yelled his fire order to the gunners. In a split second, shells came screaming over on the way to the targets. Before long, the report came from the forward observation post that all shells hit the targets.

　　Mao Shaohua told the reporters that his troops station in a peripheral area of the Tenggeli Desert, where the wind could gust up to force 6 or 7 in winter and spring every year and whip up huge dust storms in the area. However his brigade has purposely chosen the atrocious weathers to temper its troops. In addition, as the sandstorm might bring adverse impact upon artillery live fire at wartime, this brigade has invented three types of dust-proof devices and created artillery rapid-fire methods through simplification of command procedure, thus the live shell firing effect has been effectively enhanced.

　　By Peng Kaicheng and Li Qingwei

　　(Feb 14, PLA Daily)