解放軍空軍建軍最初的數10 年，其空軍戰略係以支援陸軍為主，解放軍空軍未來戰略構想發生劇變，係肇因於1985 年鄧小平提出「戰略決策」； 該決策要求軍方從準備遂行「早打、大打、打核戰」改為遂行「局部戰爭」。這些改變包括撰寫新教材、研究攻防兼備的能力以及研析戰役與戰略理論等。1987 年王海提出「攻防兼備」的構想，卻未受到公開的矚目。波灣戰爭以後，解放軍空軍了解到其軍事科技的落後，及空軍作戰訓練準則已不適用於現代戰爭，這使得本身面臨了空軍戰略調整的壓力。1999 年解放軍空軍司令員劉順堯開始強調攻勢作戰的必要性，並宣佈「攻防兼備」空軍戰略，以建立打一場「高技術條件下局部戰爭」的軍事能力。

During its first few decades, People’s Liberation Army Air Force strategy was primarily formulated to support the ground forces’ needs. Serious changes in the way the PLAAF thought about its future began as a result of Deng Xiaoping’s 1985 “strategic decision” that directed the armed forces to change from preparation for an “early, major, and nuclear war” to preparation for “local war.” These changes included writing new teaching materials, conducting research on combination of offensive and defensive capabilities, and doing research on campaign and strategic theory. Wang Hai initiated the concept of combination of offensive and defensive operations in 1987, but it did not receive much publicity. Since the Gulf war, the PLAAF has been grappling with the demands of a radically changed its strategy that underscored the technological obsolescence of their armaments and so fundamentally affected the missions of the air forces that its traditional training principles and objective were largely inapplicable to. In late 1999, the PLAAF’ s commander, Liu Shunyao, began to emphasize the need to fight offensive battles and declare PLAAF’s strategy of combination of offensive and defensive operations to build a People’s Liberation Army capable of waging “local war under high-tech conditions.”