'Little Eagles' earn their wings

Peng Junxia, head of the air force's enrollment department, says: "As the Air Force Chief Commander Ma Xiaotian said, the 'little eagle' project is not to expedite the training and education of pilots but to instill professional awareness and sense of responsibility in people from an early age."

The program was devised also because it is becoming increasingly difficult for the air force to enroll qualified flying cadets from among high school graduates after the criterion for college entrance exam scores was raised. About 6 million students in China enroll in colleges every year, and only about 900,000 of them get admitted to the top 100 universities. Confounding the problem is a 2010 national physical fitness survey conducted by 10 ministries, which shows more than 67 percent junior middle school students aged between 13 and 15 and about 80 percent high school students aged between 16 and 18 are near-sighted.

"Our program is also aimed at minimizing the damage caused to their eyesight," says Xiao Dong, vice-head of the air force enrollment department. Early training is a conventional practice in countries with strong air forces.

Many famous air force pilots started receiving professional training from an early age. For example, Ivan Nykytovych Kozhedub of the Soviet Union Red Army Air Force, who shot down 62 German planes, started training at 18, and Erich Alfred Hartmann of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, who is credited with shooting down 352 Allied planes, started at 14.

The United States Air Force has about 884 primary reserve officer training corps with 100,000 registered trainees. Russia, France and the UK have had similar arrangements since World War II.

Kang Zhuang, a flight instructor of the aviation university, says: "A good pilot is the result of not only proper training, but also his physical instincts and other traits. Early training can help pilots excel and better adapt to life in the air."

Producing flying cadets

Learning from the Soviet Union, China established dozens of gliding schools in the 1950s that sent 12,000 flying cadets at an average age of 15.6 years to the air force by 1979, except for the period of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) when the schools were closed. Learning from the Soviet Union's experience that flying cadets with six months' tactical training could take part in real air combats, China began spreading basic aviation knowledge by establishing aviation clubs across the country to prepare reserve pilots for the air force. The targeted trainees were young students and workers.