Doubting PLA capability – the human factor

Not a trolling post.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the toys don’t make the army, but rather the human beings in the military.

And as anything run by human beings, the truth is more complicated than it sounds.

Much is made of China’s growing military capability. I don’t believe in underestimating the enemy and one should always focus on worst case scenarios.

However I think if PLA (including PLAAF and PLANAF) got involved in a conflict now or even 2025 they would perform poorer than anticipated.

My reasons:

66 years of heavy Communist indoctrination and at least 44 years of Stalinist military doctrine
PLA was formed in 1927.

It became the dominant force in China in 1949.

Between 1949 and 1993 the focus was on Stalinist style military doctrine taken to its extreme level – an emphasis on quantity over quality.

In 1993 the focus changed to more modern. However this was a gradual reform – given size of PLA it was impossible to do it a rapid fashion.

PLA leadership trained under older system

Generals are often men in their 40s and 50s and at higher levels even older.

This means that current PLA leaders generally joined the PLA in the 1960s and 1970s and their formative years were spent under the old regime.

Even lower level divisional, regimental etc commanders probably trained under the older systems.

Someone mentioned an example of first Su-27s being used in exercise as “dumb” bombers – an example of PLA leaders not understanding the concept of A2A operations.

Anyhow, it’s very difficult to change the way people think, especially if they were part of an extreme system.

The only way to rapidly change military thinking is usually through combat.

PLA culture and traditions are rooted in old doctrine

Militaries are notoriosly stubborn when it comes to traditions and cultural change.

Reform takes a long time and more often than not is unsuccessful.

In case of PLA it’s culture and traditions are rooted in 20th century Stalinism.

This does have an impact on the way a force fights:
– It oftens drives rigidity of command structure (look at Russia where the same problems persist as did in 1800s in terms of poor junior leadership).
– It determines aggressiveness (great examples being IJA and SS) or passiveness (French in 1940).
– It determines how well new concepts are embraced (e.g. German embrace of mechanised warfare in 1930s).
– It determines how knowledge is shared between units (e.g. Arab officers don’t share knowledge with their troops).
– It determines how flexible a force is and how much officers are allowed in terms of initiative.

Culture takes a long time to change and develop.

The only way to change it quickly is again war and very often catastrophic defeat (you don’t change if it’s working). Look at Germany – their 150 year old military culture based on Prussian militarism only disappeared after Germany was destroyed in WWII.

The new West German Army did as much as it could to get rid of this militaristic culture, even though it produced superb leaders.

PLA is still dominated by Communist party

The PLA is still heavily connected to Chinese Communist Party – after all it was originally it’s armed arm.

Civilian control over the PLA is formally excercised by the Central Military Commission, which is a component of the Communist Party.

This means any high truly high ranking officers are probably there because of political connections rather than merit.

Informally it’s the Chinese Politburo which controls the military.

Political Commissars still apparently exist within PLA (General Political Department). I’m not sure of how much power they have. In early days probably a lot – they also had a lot of power in Russian Red Army before it was figured out that having politically motivated untrained types leading troops led to military disasters (ie early WWII).

Whatever the case, I don’t think the politicised nature of at least top PLA leadership would lead to effective leadership in a conflict.

The Nazis kind of got away with it initially, because their officer class mainly came from pre-Nazi days and had considerable combat experience in WWI (again losing WWI was critical in prompting thinking into new ways of doing things). And Hitler never trusted the army anyway and in the end had up to 30 SS and 20+ Luftwaffe divisions at his disposal – all of which were viewed as more politically reliable, even though most of the Luftwaffe forces (the Felbdivisions) were rubbish.

Also there were plenty of older German commanders at all levels who struggled with modern concepts and still had old fashioned approaches – old habits die hard.

Potentially lingering adverse effects of Stalinist doctrine
Dunno if some of these are still in place. The Russians have struggled turning some of these problems around:

1. Poor junior leadership with effective command at higher levels (i.e. effective command is at a regimental/divisional level and not platoon/company/batallion).

2. Lack of effective NCO class.

3. Poor emphasis on logistics

4. Lack of emphasis on combined arms – indeed I read a report a couple of years ago talking about how the PLA got their best batallion commanders to participate in combined arms exercises and all of the commanders failed.

5. Lack of emphasis on qualitative and realistic training.

6. Lack of emphasis on practical learning and knowledge transfer.

Lack of any combat experience in a modern setting

The last time PLA went to war was 1979 against Vietnam and then it fared poorly.

The PLA has has no combat experience in anything resembling a modern environment.

Bombing Libyans and steamrollering Georgia in a few days might not seem like much of challenge but it does provide important lessons in things like combined arms coordination, logistics management, command and control, as well as planning.

It also provides lower level units with good experience (a firefight is a firefight after all) which in turn is used to perfect tactics and equipment.

Similarly for aircrews it’s teaching them how to operate in combat zones, even if threat is minimal. This ties in with Roman adage of “the more you sweat in peace the less you bleed in war.”

And nothing is more “sweaty” than real life combat.

No proven leadership in military innovation

Again an unknown.

However we’ve at least not seen the Chinese display any leadership in military technology which is still dominated by Russia and USA. It’s still a follower, even though it’s a very capable follower.

From a tactical perspective, it’s hard to see the Chinese developing leadership given above factors.

Being an innovator and a leader in tactics is key to military success. If your tactics and technological elements merely follow others than you are always at a disadvantage.

Look at the Israelis – they had absolute tactical leadership over Arabs for most of 1940-70s and even when they were lacking in technological field.

In PLA, concepts old in Western and Russian experience, are new – you don’t just jump generations.

So I just can’t see how a Chinese force could perform at the level of other technologically advanced and well trained forces. I think it’ll be many more decades before PLA could operate at this level – basically you have to wait for any commander trained under old doctrine or trained by someone originally trained under old doctrine to retire

Unfortunately the only way to see how PLA would perform is in an actual war and that’s something no-one really wants to see.