thobbesExcept nearly all the high ranking generals and other “leader” types were recruited in old days (very often during Cultural Revolution in the 1960s for the top brass).
And military leadership is usually a top-down affair due to hierarchical structures.
thobbesCultures can change a lot.
Sure they can. Do you realise how hard it is to change it though?
The PLA itself was pretty torn up after the Cultural Revolution. A lot of the organization had to be rebuilt through the 80s and 90s. Anecdotally, I keep hearing from western military officers in the media at how surprised the PLA’s ability to learn and grow. Take what you will from that.
Not saying they can’t learn and grow.
But their base was low – of course they’re going to “grow” quickly if they’re going from a primitive 1950s doctrine.
Getting to world class level is difficult especially if you’ve not waged a war in over 30 years.
thobbesNeither am I, but I expect a military the size and seriousness of the PLA to take training seriously.
Funny thing is up to 1993 aty least, training was not taken seriously. And neither was it in USSR either much.
thobbesI just want to interject and say that’s not true — you did see what I posted a page back, right?
The PLA enforces no conscription, even though there technically is one, and virtually all personnel are volunteers.I don’t disagree with any of this. Unfortunately we have little knowledge regarding average PLA duty length, how well they’re trained in what military regions, etc, etc.
Hmm, source?
Just saying, PLA’s gone through massive structural changes in last few decades, that statistic may be very old
RAND publication – about the best we’re going to get.
That said, I think socioeconomic status before entering service is also important, and we need to know the background of PLA’s volunteers.
PLA are vigorously improving their volunteer pool though, and trying to make a military career more attractive to potential recruits. By 2025 this should definitely start to bear fruit.
Actually it was saying in that RAND corporation study that at least rural Chinese (traditional brunt of PLA) aren’t so inclined to start military careers either much.
The same applies to West of course where military careers are no longer a good choice and often act as a cheap education that leads to bigger and better things in civilian firms.
thobbesAnother thought
China’s forces are largely conscript (bare in mind so are Taiwanese and South Korean forces).
Traditionally professional armies perform better than conscripts. Conscripts serve for limited time, hence they are usually not as effective as professional soldiers.
The reason is simple – by the time a conscript is fully trained, they are leaving the service.
Obviously this affects ground services more than naval or air forces who have more professionals.
One thing I did find out is that PLA’s professional NCO corps were only formed in 1999. NCOs are generally conscripts who volunteer for extra duty after period of conscription ends (unlike poor Soviet system where NCOs were just conscripts with extra training).
Attempts are being made to make NCO corp more capable.
Also PLA still has a top heavy command structure with 33% of all personnel being officers, compared to only 15% in US. This obviously has an impact on operational command and control.
EDIT Apparently turnover of staff due to conscription is 25%
thobbesThat said, China would have a unique interest in actually adhering to the geneva convention and especially have one in treating civilians and POWs well — or at least, that would be the image they’d try to portray.
It’s also a unique case because despite the animosity, chinese people don’t actually “hate” taiwanese people, because fact is a generation back they were all a single people, and they are still seen as chinese. Intergroup social distance is a big factor in war crimes, I think, and that may be slightly reduced in our scenario compared to most previous conflicts.
Believe it or not, but Serbs and Croats didn’t hate each other pre-1991. We had to be reminded we hate each other by politicians with agendas to grind and careers to make.
And once shooting starts, the propaganda machine kicks in.
The other question is how disciplined are the troops (certainly Red Army did not have this, if you look at performance in liberated territories and German in 1940s).
Unfortunately that is the type of detail we will never know until they’re actually tested in conflict.
This is my point too.
But I was more referring to the idea of UAVs IDing and taking out small fortifications with missiles, which chinese UAVs have been capable of doing for a few years now.
Ideas are good but it’s all down to implementation.
I wonder how much influence soviet doctrine would have had on PLA before the sino soviet split.
One of the reasons I think your mentioning of stalinist and soviet models is not quite something we can extrapolate PLA doctrine on.
PLA model certainly had components of Soviet models. It’s other key component was the peasant warfare incurred up to 1940s.
Another thought
China’s forces are largely conscript (bare in mind so are Taiwanese and South Korean forces).
Traditionally professional armies perform better than conscripts. Conscripts serve for limited time, hence they are usually not as effective as professional soldiers.
The reason is simple – by the time a conscript is fully trained, they are leaving the service.
Obviously this affects ground services more than naval or air forces who have more professionals.
One thing I did find out is that PLA’s professional NCO corps were only formed in 1999. NCOs are generally conscripts who volunteer for extra duty after period of conscription ends (unlike poor Soviet system where NCOs were just conscripts with extra training).
Attempts are being made to make NCO corp more capable.
Also PLA still has a top heavy command structure with 33% of all personnel being officers, compared to only 15% in US. This obviously has an impact on operational command and control.
thobbesAlso interesting is the assessment ((51:06).) that even in a few years, PLA would be on par with France in terms of expeditionary capability but no where close to British capability in the Falklands and overall have capability of Eastern Pacific Soviet Fleet.
thobbesI don’t quite know enough about the history of any of these nations to make an even half knowledgable comment.
Militaries reflect their parent culture. They also often have their own cultures which in some cases don’t even reflect the values of wider society (apparently Argentina is a good example of this as its military classes are quite insular).
Oh and not all branches are the same, or even types of services (e.g. Red Army artillery was viewed as far more professional and capable than the armoured and infantry services in WWII). It all depends on their history and experiences. This applies to West as well – SAC was a far more professional body than the ACC especially in terms of managing nuclear assets. (apparently morale in nuclear units plummeted once ACC was formed).
The comments on ASW are very interesting. This makes Chinese SSNs a greater threat to carrier groups than anti-shipping ballistic missiles (still not sold on that one even if the Americans had been the ones to claim they’ve invented them).
thobbesElaborate?
I think they’d throw the Geneva Convention out the window. Kinda like every non-Western military does (including “us” Croats).
To be fair, the russian uav industry is nonexistant.
PLA’s UAV capability is actually not bad — or at least the country’s UAV industry isn’t too bad.
Both fair comments.
Again do we have any idea how effective the Chinese can use their UAVs?
There’s things such as information flow. High command might have a perfect picture of enemy positions, but the divisional/batallion/company commanders are absolutely blind.
And the older Stalinist models were terrible at both reconaissance as well as information dissemination.
thobbesI did some reading on Stalingrad a few years back. I just don’t buy that Stalingrad is a valid comparison given the number of variables that have to be changed when we apply it to a military with modern air power and the complete difference in size and power between the two militaries in this discussion.. Imagine if Nazi Germany had air superiority and precision strike capabilities during Stalingrad. That would have drastically changed the outcome.
Doubt it. The Luftwaffe was generally able to bomb at will over Stalingrad.
The Russians like the Vietnamese, like the various insurgents around the world and like the Wehrmacht itself in 1944-45 was able to develop tactics to deny impacts of air superiority to varying degrees.
Curiously enough, all examples of militaries without a modern air force, and specifically precision strike capabilities.
And in 1999, PGMs proved relatively inneffective in dense terrain (supported of course by the weather).
And those armies had other advantages – absolute lack of consideration of human life being one.
But that’s why I think of the kind of urban resistance you’re referring to as an insurgent campaign. The PLA doesn’t need to flush out every soldier, find every hideout, and take out every installation to take control of the city. The whole point of setting up fortifications is to keep an area within your absolute control. Once your fortifications are down nothing stops the invading force from marching in and occupying your city. Sure, the ROCAF may be able to maintain pockets of control with effective hideouts, but then you literally become an insurgent force.
Fortifications are often used to delay enemy forces so you can move in enough troops for counter attack. In essence they’re a time delay.
The Rommels of the world knew the Atlantic Wall wouldn’t hold. It was a stalling tactics to allow the Panzers to get into position (of course all of this was stuffed up through poor C3 and intel).
And it’s not insurgency.
The Syrian Air Force isn’t really a spitshine example of modern CAS and Precision strike capabilities.
An irrelevance. They’ve been using Fuel Air Explosives and even chemical weapons backed up by massive amounts of artillery.
Let’s try not to make China vs Russia comparisons. The factors affecting the development and progress of each military is very different. If you want a better idea of what China may be capable of in terms of CAS, you should look specifically at the military developments that are actually happening in China.
Russia v China is relevant comparison. Russia is of course number 2 military power in the planet still.
I know. I’m just not sure that China is necessarily short on those capabilities (or developing them).
They might. But can they use them? Have they proliferated all this knowledge down to platoon commanders and down to their still largely conscript military?
I’m sure
those sorts of things would happen, but again it’s a matter of degrees. The PLA wouldn’t blindly march into an urban combat zone without first attempting to clear it to the best of their abilities, and these sorts of attacks would have to occur at a significant frequency for them to really impact the pace at which the PLA could gain control of Taipei. Given the significant resource and size advantage the PLA would have in an invasion of Taiwan, I’m just not sure that the ROCAF could really slow the PLA down, even if they can be a thorn on their side.
Depends. Russians did it in both Berlin and Grozny. YNA did it in Vukovar.
Like logistics, reconaissance is very often neglected by many armies other than on paper.
I’m not going to pretend I know what sort of reconaissance capabilities your average PLA division has or how intel flows from reconaissance forces down to line troops.
Well…it’s Georgia. How effective any tactic is is dependent not on one but all militaries involved in combat.
The USA applies same level of capability on Afghanistan Taliban that it would on a PLA armoured column.
Which is the most efficient way to train while you’re short on hardware. This is already changing as China builds up and modernizes its forces. A
consequence of using a future war scenario is that you need to consider the changes that would occur to each military. In China’s case that would mean considering a far more modern PLA than what we have now, which has changed significantly in just a decade, and will have changed significantly more in another decade.
Very true.
But I’m never sold on “toys make the boys” – just look at the Arabs.
This is why you have military exercises.
And until someone shoots back you don’t know how things really perform.
Exercises are very limited and too artificial.
In 1940-41 Loiusiana Maneouvres, Tank Destroyer Command performed well and according to doctrine.
Once the poo hit the fan in Tunisia, Italy and France, tank destroyer doctrine proved a flop.
Agreed, but I wouldn’t underestimate it, especially against a smaller target like Taiwan.
I have no doubt PLA would smash the Taiwanese – through massed ballistic missile stikes alone.
thobbesCheers.
And I agree, media and propaganda will play a big role.
Again, if I had my way, levelling taipei with SRBMs and airstrikes would be the last thing on my mind, and instead, I’d round up all the smaller cities and refugee sites POWs and make sure they are well fed, cared for, etc, all while circulating all these images and videos across the world, and hopefully with a well balanced political and social rhetoric.
Somehow I doubt the PLA would operate according to standard Western norms of warfare as in real life only Western forces operate to those norms. In fact those norms often limit Western military capability.
How about urban houses or apartments where opfor can be reliably IDed via FLIR, and struck with a low collateral damage HJ-10 or 50kg LS-6 type munition?
Sure.
I’d still like to see whether they have the C4ISR to do that effectively. As stated even the Russians haven’t displayed this kind of capability.
In fact only US and Israel have and one of those is pretty much stuck in a state of perpetual warfare while the other has been for 20+ years.
thobbesHi,
What is this $700b procurement? Who is procuring what?
thobbesI think you make a few stereotypic inferences, and underestimate PLA willingness to learn (especially post gulf war and third taiwan strait crisis), as well as how critically they can look at their own force capability, but I only know enough to say that your conclusion is not how reality is, and am not sufficiently knowledgable to explain way.
Couldn’t get into one of them and the other didn’t seem too relevant (SDF seemed more of “my gun is bigger than yours”).
Also I don’t doubt some things have changed in terms of human issues.
However those human factors are very hard to change and usually require a major event (usually losing a war or major battle) to promote change.
And even then change is not necessarily forthcoming – a great example is the Russian approach to command which hasn’t changed for 200 years. And this has persisted from Napoleonic times to today.
Military culture even often dictates the types of lessons learned – e.g. IJA learned the wrong lessons from Khalkin Gol.
Also not saying only NATO military culture is good – there have been some articles on problems with some Western European militaries where soldiering is viewed in the same manner as other civil service. Obvious result is this impinges on military performance. Indeed it’s one of the reasons the French wanted to go it alone in Mali when it came to ground ops.
The Dragon Extends its Reach youtube thing is very interesting though, especially comments on EW.
thobbesGood post Blitzo.
To be fair I suspect Taiwan would be conquered.
But the longer they hold out the more likely the US will get involved (public opinion etc).
And any Chinese warcrimes such as levelling chunks of Taipei or starving people out, help push the US public opninion towards entering the conflict.
thobbesYou’re explaining the overall idea a lot better than I am :P. I think a lot of my arguments are predicated on the idea that if the PLA landed a sizable invasion force, that would have to mean it had already attained air superiority and secured the waters around the island. The following step would be to surround and secure the areas around Taipei and slowly gain control block by block, first using fixed wing aircraft (UAVS?) to scout out areas and taking out as many fortifications along the way as possible before moving troops in.
Define “fortification.”
We’re not talking plainly visible concrete bunkers ala Omaha Beach or Japanese gun positions at Tarawa.
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