In the past 49 years, a aerial survey regiment of the Lanzhou Military Area Command by the Jialing River at the foot of the Qinling Mountains stationed, has done a wonderful job in measuring the whole of China and　contributed its share to the building of a more prosperous China. The regiment has made a total of 2 4219 flights around China, equivalent to more than 2 200 full circles around the earth. These flights covered an area of 41.08 million km2, which means that they have combed through China for more than 4 times.

Ever since its establishment, the regiment has fulfilled a lot of major survey tasks by bearing in mind that the importance of Chinese interests is above everything else. For a long period of time, the world believed that the highest Mountain Qomolangma (Mt. Everest) was 8, 882m tall and the figure was printed on all maps in those days. The figure was a result of Indians' work on surveying longitudes and latitudes from the ground and Frenchmen's mathematic calculations according to geographical principles. But the Chinese people wanted to know exactly how tall the mountain was. In September 1974, the aerial survey regiment was assigned the task of measuring the Qomolangma. The commander of the regiment　led a team of 96 people to survey the mountain. After several months'flight in the forbidden area, they produced an accurate measurement of 8848.13m, changing the long-standing wrong figure.

The tasks regiment undertakes are meaningful to China. Soldiers of the regiment fly their planes to measure the whole country from the Nansha and Xisha Islands in the south to the Heihe and Mohe Rivers　in the north, from East China Sea in the east to the Loess Plateau in the west. They scored numerous firsts. For example, they conducted the first human aerial survey over Qomolangma Mountain and the first photographic surveys of Chinese satellite launchings,experiments of atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and intercontinental missiles. It surveyed the first Chinese mountain railroad Baoji-Chengdu Railroad-the　and drew the first modern map of China and the first version of military maps. Other successful missions include borderline surveying to delimit the borders with Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, India and Laos. In addition, the regiment has accomplished the aerial surveying tasks for the location selection of the Three Gorges Project, the Gezhouba Dam Water Conservancy Hub Project, the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railroad, the Beijing-Jiulong Railroad, the South-North Water Diversion Project, the Dayawan Nuclear Power Plant, making great contributions to defending Chinese national interests and building a stronger Chinese economy.

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