On June 2, 1987, the Central Military Commission broke off and renamed the Third Test Site of the Conventional Weapons Test Base into the Third Test Base of Conventional Weapons and placed under the direct leadership of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
Zhou Liezhang was appointed commander, and
Li Jiangeng was appointed political commissar. From the start, the base received an extremely high degree of secrecy at the time, due to it work on electronic warfare. In 2005, the base undertook the army's first pilot program for the training of actual electronic countermeasures combat units. In 2009, the base's electronic countermeasures training brigade (电子对抗训练大队) was formally established. On December 5, 2012, the State Key Laboratory of Complex Electromagnetic Environmental Effects on Electronic Information Systems was unveiled at the Luoyang Test Center. The construction of this national key laboratory was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China on October 9, 2012. The Test Center has been involved in the
Chinese Space Program since at least 1999. In particular, the Test Center's Surveying, Mapping and Navigation Team has had the responsibility for the more delicate metrological tasks, in particular the high-precision surveying and mapping support for the "
Shenzhou" spacecraft program. The Team has carried out over 700 surveying and mapping support tasks, from the initial
geodetic survey of possible landing sites in Inner Mongolia, to surveying and mapping support for "Shenzhou 5" and Shenzhou 6" and telemetry work for "Shenzhou 7". The team also undertook the hyper-precise elevation measurements for the early stages of construction of the
500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) project in 2012. The test's center parent department, the General Armament Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, was abolished in January 2016, and the base was transferred to the newly established Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission. It was then transferred to the newly founded
Strategic Support Force, and on the dissolution of that force in April 2024, it passed under the jurisdiction of the Aerospace Force. == See also ==