China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

[mota bhai 2,675]

In many ways, the PLA is weaker than it looks – and more dangerous.

By Ian Easton
January 31, 2014

In April 2003, the Chinese Navy decided to put a large group of its best submarine talent on the same boat as part of an experiment to synergize its naval elite. The result? Within hours of leaving port, the Type 035 Ming III class submarine sank with all hands lost. Never having fully recovered from this maritime disaster, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is still the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council never to have conducted an operational patrol with a nuclear missile submarine.

China is also the only member of the UN’s “Big Five” never to have built and operated an aircraft carrier. While it launched a refurbished Ukrainian built carrier amidst much fanfare in September 2012 – then-President Hu Jintao and all the top brass showed up – soon afterward the big ship had to return to the docks for extensive overhauls because of suspected engine failure; not the most auspicious of starts for China’s fledgling “blue water” navy, and not the least example of a modernizing military that has yet to master last century’s technology.

Indeed, today the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) still conducts long-distance maneuver training at speeds measured by how fast the next available cargo train can transport its tanks and guns forward. And if mobilizing and moving armies around on railway tracks sounds a bit antiquated in an era of global airlift, it should – that was how it was done in the First World War.

Not to be outdone by the conventional army, China’s powerful strategic rocket troops, the Second Artillery Force, still uses cavalry units to patrol its sprawling missile bases deep within China’s vast interior. Why? Because it doesn’t have any helicopters. Equally scarce in China are modern fixed-wing military aircraft. So the Air Force continues to use a 1950s Soviet designed airframe, the Tupolev Tu-16, as a bomber (its original intended mission), a battlefield reconnaissance aircraft, an electronic warfare aircraft, a target spotting aircraft, and an aerial refueling tanker. Likewise, the PLA uses the Soviet designed Antonov An-12 military cargo aircraft for ELINT (electronic intelligence) missions, ASW (anti-submarine warfare) missions, geological survey missions, and airborne early warning missions. It also has an An-12 variant specially modified for transporting livestock, allowing sheep and goats access to remote seasonal pastures.

But if China’s lack of decent hardware is somewhat surprising given all the hype surrounding Beijing’s massive military modernization program, the state of “software” (military training and readiness) is truly astounding. At one military exercise in the summer of 2012, a strategic PLA unit, stressed out by the hard work of handling warheads in an underground bunker complex, actually had to take time out of a 15-day wartime simulation for movie nights and karaoke parties. In fact, by day nine of the exercise, a “cultural performance troupe” (common PLA euphemism for song-and-dance girls) had to be brought into the otherwise sealed facility to entertain the homesick soldiers.

...

While recent years have witnessed a tremendous Chinese propaganda effort aimed at convincing the world that the PRC is a serious military player that is owed respect, outsiders often forget that China does not even have a professional military. The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.

This may be one reason why China’s marines (or “naval infantry” in PLA parlance) and other amphibious warfare units train by landing on big white sandy beaches that look nothing like the west coast of Taiwan (or for that matter anyplace else they could conceivably be sent in the East China Sea or South China Sea).

...

Intense and realistic training is dangerous business, and the American maxim that the more you bleed during training the less you bleed during combat doesn’t translate well in a Leninist military system. Just the opposite. China’s military is intentionally organized to bureaucratically enforce risk-averse behavior, because an army that spends too much time training is an army that is not engaging in enough political indoctrination. Beijing’s worst nightmare is that the PLA could one day forget that its number one mission is protecting the Communist Party’s civilian leaders against all its enemies – especially when the CCP’s “enemies” are domestic student or religious groups campaigning for democratic rights, as happened in 1989 and 1999, respectively.

For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory. And when PLA officers do train, it is almost always a cautious affair that rarely involves risky (i.e., realistic) training scenarios.

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Yet none of this should be comforting to China’s potential military adversaries. It is precisely China’s military weakness that makes it so dangerous. Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War. This appears to be a major factor leading it to act so brazenly in the East and South China Seas. Indeed, China’s navy now appears to be itching for a fight anywhere it can find one. Experienced combat veterans almost never act this way.

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Recognizing that it will never be able to compete with the U.S. and its allies using traditional methods of war fighting, the PLA has turned to unconventional “asymmetric” first-strike weapons and capabilities to make up for its lack of conventional firepower, professionalism and experience. These weapons include more than 1,600 offensive ballistic and cruise missiles.

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China has also developed a broad array of space weapons designed to destroy satellites ... China has also built the world’s largest army of cyber warriors, and the planet’s second largest fleet of drones ... All of these capabilities make it more likely that China could one day be tempted to start a war, and none come with any built in escalation control.

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It is highly improbable that the PLA’s strategy could actually win a war. Take a Taiwan invasion scenario, which is the PLA’s top operational planning priority. While much hand-wringing has been done in recent years about the shifting military balance in the Taiwan Strait, so far no one has been able to explain how any invading PLA force would be able to cross over 100 nautical miles of exceedingly rough water and successfully land on the world’s most inhospitable beaches, let alone capture the capital.

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The PLA simply does not have enough transport ships to make the crossing, and those it does have are remarkably vulnerable to Taiwanese anti-ship cruise missiles, guided rockets, smart cluster munitions, mobile artillery and advanced sea mines – not to mention its elite corps of American-trained fighter and helicopter pilots. Even if some lucky PLA units could survive the trip (not at all a safe assumption), they would be rapidly overwhelmed by a small but professional Taiwan military that has been thinking about and preparing for this fight for decades.

Going forward it will be important for the U.S. and its allies to recognize that China’s military is in many ways much weaker than it looks. However, it is also growing more capable of inflicting destruction on its enemies through the use of first-strike weapons. To mitigate the destabilizing effects of the PLA’s strategy, the U.S. and its allies should try harder to maintain their current (if eroding) leads in military hardware. But more importantly, they must continue investing in the training that makes them true professionals.

Ian Easton is a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, VA. He was also a recent visiting fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo. Previously, he was a China analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/01/chinas-deceptively-weak-and-dangerous-military/?allpages=yes

Edited January 31, 2014 by mota bhai

[Sousuke 1,214]

Any conflict would be asymmetrical.

By the way anyone hear about the Iranian F4 encounter with an F22?

[mota bhai 2,675]

From a few months ago or is there a more recent one

[GandD 5,966]

Another good read.

[Sousuke 1,214]

From a few months ago or is there a more recent one

Yeah I think it was actually last September but the pentagon released details recently. Apparently the F22 flew underneath the F4 to checkout its weapons load out and then swung back on its tail before radioing "I think you should go home" or something like that.

[GandD 5,966]

Yeah I think it was actually last September but the pentagon released details recently. Apparently the F22 flew underneath the F4 to checkout its weapons load out and then swung back on its tail before radioing "I think you should go home" or something like that.

I haven't kept up, does anyone know if they fixed the f22 oxygen problems? They were having problems getting clean oxygen to the pilots.

[Sousuke 1,214]

I haven't kept up, does anyone know if they fixed the f22 oxygen problems? They were having problems getting clean oxygen to the pilots.

Yeah, it was caused by a leaky valve and something to do with the Oxygen Generator. Sounds like it was officially fixed last fall.

[Hotter Otter 1,211]

It's an interesting read, but it's all about the numbers. Not even the US has the amount of troops needed to invade China so they know they are pretty safe on that front and the army does not need to be world class. As long as they update the airforce and navy they will be able to overwhelm any opponents in regional conflicts with ease and regional conflicts is what they are going to be fighting. For example they have at least 62 submarines, even if they are not the most up to date they would easily see off Japan's/Taiwans surface navy and they have far more warplanes too.

If the Chinese start to develop more advanced submarines similar to the British Astute Class (which is so quiet the US Navy can't detect it) then that would change the whole balance of power as the US carrier battle groups would be too vulnerable in that region and have to be withdrawn, leaving it's allies vulnerable.

[GandD 5,966]

If it was all about numbers, the Iraqis would have fared a bit better back in the 90s.

[Sousuke 1,214]

In reality its more about deterring US carriers (and Japanese carriers…yes they do sort of have a few) from getting near the coast or islands of dispute. Hence the development of fairly advanced ship killing missiles etc.

[GandD 5,966]

In reality its more about deterring US carriers (and Japanese carriers…yes they do sort of have a few) from getting near the coast or islands of dispute. Hence the development of fairly advanced ship killing missiles etc.

Why couldn't they just fly from Guam, Japan, or the Philippines? Or from Whitman for that matter?

[Sousuke 1,214]

Why couldn't they just fly from Guam, Japan, or the Philippines? Or from Whitman for that matter?

Its a sizable reduction in assets available if you can't keep 1 or two carriers away.

[GandD 5,966]

For sure. Not insurmountable though.

[Pooky 3,786]

For sure. Not insurmountable though.

For the heavies, flying in from one of the " fixed" carriers is not a problem. You don't want a B-1B, B-52, or a B-2 flying into an area where friendliest don't have air superiority, though, as they tend to become so much scrap metal at the bottom of the South China Sea rather quickly.

However, flying a fast mover that far and far that long, on a regular basis, presents it's own set of problems. Keeping aircrew in their seats for an extended time is bad enough. But to get close, a fast mover is likely to require tanker support and, although unconfirmed, the PLAAF is reputed to have long range AAMs, of Russian origin, which are designed to take out high value assets (AWACS and tankers) from outside escorts' missile range. Fighting an air campaign at a range disadvantage is not a great idea.

Mind you, the USN uses the F/A-18 E & F Rhino, which would get taken to the cleaners by the PLAAF Su-27 Flankers, so that's not a great plan, either.

Edited January 31, 2014 by Pooky