PLAAF assessment/critique

Pull up a comfy chair…light up a fat one (after all, it is your birthday Art! 😀 ) and have a read if the PLAAF are what float your boat:

The Chinese Air Force and air and space power

Editorial Abstract: Analysts who predict that China will become the next peer competitor of the United States often cite as evidence China’s large population and latent industrial potential. If they are correct, a critical component of US-Chinese relations will involve understanding the strategic perspective, composition, and doctrine of China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force, because the unique characteristics of Chinese society and culture discourage using historical war-fighting models as foundations for strategy.

Zhou Enlai

IN AN INFORMAL interview with James Reston of the New York Times in 1971, Zhou Enlai, premier of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), laid out in broad terms the PRC’s foreign-policy objectives: (1) unification of the mainland and Taiwan, (2) removal of US military power from Asia, (3) withdrawal of the massive Soviet military force deployed along the Sino-Soviet border, and (4) prevention of the rise of Japan as a military power.1 Meeting these objectives would have established the PRC as the dominant military power in Asia. Even more important, meeting them today would produce the same effect. Equally notable is their ideological neutrality: any Chinese nationalist, Communist or otherwise, can support such policy aims. If the Chinese Communist Party continues its gradual drift from Marxism to Chinese nationalism as its justification for ruling, these objectives are not likely to change. Although diplomacy can finesse and conveniently obscure the issue, to a degree, and although the events of 11 September 2001 may have changed its tone, the overall circumstances of US-PRC relations make very possible a future of fundamental hostility.

Even though China’s primary focus today remains on its internal development and even though it is probably satisfied with its land borders, such is not the case with its maritime borders-especially with Taiwan and, secondarily, the South China Sea.2 The status of Taiwan, in particular, could lead to war sometime in the future. Even more important, China is a profoundly dissatisfied power in psychological terms. It craves respect, but the United States is not likely to give it such respect as long as the PRC remains a dictatorship. To the degree that the PRC ultimately aspires to the leadership of Asia, it is likely to clash with the United States, Japan, and probably with Russia. A policy of containing China as a strategic competitor will be regarded by its government as hostile, while a policy of “engagement” has been and will likely continue to be regarded in the same light-as one of smiling containment and subversion. Some sources have indicated that the PRC government already regards the United States as a rival and has done so for several years; indeed, anti-Americanism is evidently widespread among the population.3 The overall circumstances of US-PRC relations provide at least considerable potential for a fundamentally hostile Sino-US relationship.

For these reasons, it is prudent to study China in general and its military in particular. If the Chinese are not an enemy, it is worthwhile to understand them so as to minimize the chances of inadvertently identifying them as such.4 If they are, we need to understand why and to judge accurately whether they represent a threat, since a powerless enemy is more a nuisance than a danger.5 If they are indeed a present or emerging threat, we must understand them in order to deter or, if necessary, defeat them.

In studying the Chinese military as a potential enemy, one must pay attention to more than just the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its component services. Specifically, one would do well to begin with the PRC’s military doctrine, since it shapes objectives, strategy, force structure, procurement, and training. This article addresses the air and space power doctrine of the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and analyzes its ability to carry out that doctrine.

Doctrine

Drew and Snow define three levels of doctrine: (1) fundamental, which deals with basic characteristics such as the nature of war, purpose of military power, and relationship of military force to other instruments of power; (2) environmental, “a compilation of beliefs about the employment of military forces within a particular operating medium” (functionally speaking, this is air and space power doctrine-a statement of how today’s air and space power capabilities should be used to have a decisive effect on military operations and wars); and (3) organizational, which includes basic beliefs about the operation of a particular military organization and its roles, missions, and current objectives.6 In the US Air Force, Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine, covers environmental doctrine, defining it as “most fundamental and enduring beliefs that describe and guide the proper use of air and space forces in military action”; AFDD 2, Organization and Employment of Aerospace Power, covers organizational doctrine.7

The PLA and its component services do not use the term military doctrine. The closest analog they have to Western doctrine is what they call military science, which links theory and practice.8 Chinese military science consists of (1) basic military science, the fundamental concepts that govern PLA military operations at the various levels of war (basic military science would include whatever environmental doctrine-air and space power doctrine-the PRC might have);9 and (2) applied military theory, the specifics of how to apply military force at each level of warfare (similar to US organizational doctrine).10

PLA military concepts, including those of the PLAAF, are not couched in terms of roles and missions, as is the case with the US military. Instead, they use the alternative concept of campaigns, defined as a series of battles fought under a unified command to achieve a local or overall objective.11 Campaigns primarily take place at what the US military would call the operational level of war, using a wartime operational structure called a War Zone. Depending on the size of the operation, a War Zone can encompass either a portion of or more than one Military Region.12

A critical point of the PLA’s campaign planning lies in its expectations of the military environment in the type of war it expects to face. These expectations will obviously have a dramatic effect on strategy, force structure, and procurement. At present, the PLA views the primary threat as a local (i.e., regional) war under high-technology conditions.13 It expects such a war to have the following general characteristics:

* It will be a limited war, fought in a restricted geographic area for limited objectives with limited means and a conscious effort to curtail destruction. It will not be a comprehensive or total war, fought to destroy the Chinese state and to invade and occupy the homeland. It will not threaten the survival of the states involved. In many ways, such a conflict is the modern equivalent of a border war.14 Overall, the threat of world war is minimal for the indefinite future, due to the revolutionary changes in external circumstances faced by the PRC over the last 15 years (i.e., the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War).15

* Such a war will be fought with comparatively small, highly trained joint forces using mostly long-range, precision-strike weapons made available by the ongoing revolution in military technology.

* The objective in such warfare is to defeat the enemy rapidly by inflicting strategic and operational paralysis through attacks on his weaknesses. In fact, it may be possible to defeat the enemy with one strike. This kind of war will not require annihilation of the enemy or physical occupation of his territory.

* This multidimensional war will unfold in all dimensions (air, sea, ground, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum) simultaneously. Warfare in one dimension will integrate with that in the other dimensions. Forces will fight throughout the depth of the theater (a “full-depth strike”), and the battlefield will be extremely fluid and dynamic. Airpower and precision strike are now the primary means of conducting warfare, with ground operations secondary.16

This type of war, of course, represents a revolutionary change from the traditional PLA concept of People’s War, which assumed a total war fought primarily by ground forces and a comprehensively mobilized population against an invading enemy seeking to destroy and occupy the PRC. At first glance, it would appear that this new war is tailor-made for air and space power, which can have a major impact by waging an independent air campaign against vital targets and supporting other arms of the military.17 Thus, one would reasonably expect the PLAAF to have a concept of air and space power that calls for such an air force and to restructure itself along the lines of the US Air Force (i.e., emphasizing all-weather offensive aircraft; precision-guided munitions; and sophisticated command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability). However, little evidence suggests that PLAAF military science thinks in these terms or that the PLAAF is building this kind of an organization. Lf anything, a massive disconnect seems to exist between what we might expect the PLAAF to do and what it is actually doing. Several likely explanations account for this situation.

For one, by assuming that the PLAAF would choose a course parallel to our own, we are mirror-imaging-that is, projecting our assumptions and thinking onto the PLAAF’s. This practice proved dismally common and nearly disastrous during both the Cold War and, in fact, at times during our past dealings with the PRC.18 It is essential to remember that we are not dealing with Americans or, for that matter, Westerners. The PLAAF’s aims are not necessarily the ones we would choose under similar circumstances (even if the PLAAF’s aims were identical to ours, it might choose drastically different ways of pursuing them); its assumptions are not necessarily our assumptions; and its tactics and strategies are not necessarily the ones we might choose. We must remember that the PLAAF’s history is not ours and, above all, that the circumstances it faces are profoundly different than those we face.

Beyond this explanation for the apparent disconnect, I suggest two others. The first is that local war under high-tech conditions is what some authors call aspirational doctrine.19 The second is that, at present, PLA military science, strategy, and procurement do not seek to wage a high-tech local war but to defeat an enemy who wages high-tech local war against them. These two explanations are not mutually exclusive.