Sino Mil Sec 2011 Report

It's time!

Red China - the world's largest autocracy of the old school Collectivist type gets all Congressfied with an especial annual pdfing Congressional Report bout Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China.

Ton of hot deets, cool maps, missile stuff  - you name it - the Sino Mil Sec thang be game it!

“Although China’s expanding military capabilities can facilitate cooperation in pursuit of shared objectives, they can also increase the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation. Strengthening our military-to-military relationship is a critical part of our strategy to shape China’s choices as we seek to capitalize on opportunities for cooperation while mitigating risks.”

East Wind! The old keep your buds close and your enemies/frenemies closer meme (at Taiwan's expense) gets full play, following up on Admiral Mike's Military to Military Super Friends Hot Line.

So how bout them expanding military capabilities hooked up China Strategy? (Pg 22) Peoples Lib Army War hoes have developed quite a set of Nat'l Military Strategic Guidelines for the New Period

Tenets of Active Defense include the following: 

Overall, our military strategy is defensive. We attack only after being attacked. But our operations are offensive.

Space or time will not limit our counter-offensive. We will not put boundaries on the limits of our offenses.

We will wait for the time and conditions that favor our forces when we do initiate offensive operations.

We will focus on the opposing force’s weaknesses.

Near Seas Defense.

Offshore Defense is an overarching strategic concept that directs the PLA Navy to prepare for three essential missions including: keeping the enemy within limits and resisting invasion from the sea; protecting the nation’s territorial sovereignty; and, safeguarding the motherland’s unity and maritime rights.

The so-called near seas, which remain a primary focus for the Navy, include the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. Increasingly, the PLA is taking on missions that reflect China’s expanding commercial and diplomatic interests beyond the near seas, into the ―far seas which include the Philippine Sea and beyond. PLA Navy doctrine for maritime operations focuses on six offensive and defensive campaigns: blockade, anti-sea lines of communication, maritime-land attack, anti-ship, maritime transportation protection, and naval base defense.

The Peoples Lib Navy appears primarily focused on contingencies within the first and second island chains, with emphasis on a potential conflict with U.S. forces over Taiwan or a territorial dispute.

PRC military theorists refer to two “island “chains” along China‟s maritime perimeter. The First Island Chain includes Taiwan and the Ryuku Islands, the Second Island Chain extends from Japan to Guam.

Ground forces are tasked with defending China’s borders, ensuring domestic stability, and exercising regional power projection. PLA ground forces are transitioning from a static defensive force allocated across seven internal MRs, oriented for positional, mobile, urban, and mountain offensive campaigns; coastal defense campaigns; and landing campaigns, to a more offensive and maneuver-oriented force organized and equipped for operations along China’s periphery.

Peoples Lib Army has emphasized the development of new types of combat forces, optimized its organization and structure, strengthened military training in conditions of informatization, accelerated the digitized upgrading and retrofitting of main battle weaponry, organically deployed new types of weapon platforms, and significantly boosted its capabilities in long-distance maneuvers and integrated assaults.

The ground forces appear to be leading the PLA’s effort to experiment with ad hoc, multi-service, joint tactical formations to execute integrated joint operations.

Air Warfare. 


The PLA Air Force continues its conversion from a force for limited territorial defense to a more flexible and agile force able to operate off-shore in both offensive and defensive roles, using the U.S. and Russian air forces as models. Mission focus areas include: strike, air and missile defense, early warning and reconnaissance, and strategic mobility. The PLA Air Force also has a leading role in China’s planning for anti-access and area denial operations.

The PLA’s new missions are also driving discussions about the future of the PLA Air Force, where a general consensus has emerged that protecting China’s global interests requires an increase in the Air Force’s long-range transportation and logistics capabilities. In September 2010, the PLA Air Force conducted an unprecedented deployment of Su-27 fighter aircraft to Turkey to participate in joint air exercises with the Turkish Air Force. 

China has also been investing in stealth technology, as evidenced by the appearance of its first stealth aircraft prototype in January 2011. 

However, as with the Navy, it is likely that the Air Force’s primary focus for the coming decade will remain on building the capabilities required to pose a credible military threat to Taiwan and U.S. forces in East Asia, deter Taiwan independence, or influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms.

Space Warfare. 

PLA strategists regard the ability to utilize space and deny adversaries access to space as central to enabling modern, informatized warfare. Although PLA doctrine does not appear to address space operations as a unique operational ―campaign,‖ space operations form an integral component of other PLA campaigns. 

The PLA is acquiring a range of technologies to improve China’s space and counterspace capabilities. A PLA analysis of U.S. and Coalition military operations reinforced the importance of operations in space to enable informatized warfare, claiming that ―space is the commanding point for the information battlefield.

PLA writings emphasize the necessity of ―destroying, damaging, and interfering with the enemy’s reconnaissance... and communications satellites, suggesting that such systems, as well as navigation and early warning satellites, could be among initial targets of attack to ―blind and deafen the enemy.

"Destroying or capturing satellites and other sensors… will deprive an opponent of initiative on the battlefield and [make it difficult] for them to bring their precision guided weapons into full play."
 
Integrated Network Electronic Warfare.

PRC military writings highlight the seizure of electromagnetic dominance in the early phases of a campaign as among the foremost tasks to ensure battlefield success. PLA theorists have coined the term ―integrated network electronic warfare (wangdian yitizhan—网电一体战) to describe the use of electronic warfare, computer network operations, and kinetic strikes to disrupt battlefield information systems that support an adversary’s warfighting and power projection capabilities. PLA writings identify ―integrated network electronic warfare as one of the basic forms of ―integrated joint operations, suggesting the centrality of seizing and dominating the electromagnetic spectrum in PLA campaign theory.

Deception

PRC military writings point to a working definition of strategic deception as luring the other side into developing misperceptions… and establishing for oneself a strategically advantageous position by producing various kinds of false phenomena in an organized and planned manner with the smallest cost in manpower and materials.

In addition to information operations and conventional camouflage, concealment, and denial, the PLA draws from China’s historical experience and the traditional role that stratagem and deception have played in Chinese statecraft.

There is an inherent tension in Chinese strategic culture today, pitting a deep-seated tendency to conceal military capabilities and force development against a partial acceptance that excessive secrecy inflames regional and global anxiety about China’s rising power. For over a decade PRC leaders have identified the so called China threat theory as a serious hazard to the country’s international standing and reputation, threatening the development of a persistent alignment of regional and global powers in opposition to China.

There is perhaps another source of tension between the emerging reality of Chinese military power and China’s tradition of secrecy, and that is the fact that many of China’s new military capabilities are difficult or impossible to hide. Examples of such capabilities include advanced aircraft, long range missiles, and modern naval assets. Furthermore, missiles, space-based, and counterspace systems must be tested and exercised before being operationally deployed with confidence. The PLA’s growing inventory of these new assets and the ranges at which they operate effectively prevents their concealment.

China foresees comparative advantages stemming from its development of asymmetric capabilities, including in electronic warfare; from preparing to wage modern war in a battlespace where information dominance is a key to victory; and from undertaking military modernization with the benefit of new technologies not available to great powers that modernized earlier in history.

China’s copy cat of American rhetoric about force doctrine, the Revolution in Military Affairs, and information warfare is striking and presents one conclusion:

China is the only military in the world sexplicitly prepping, training and equipping to fight Great Satan.


Pic "In line with the principles of being just, reasonable, comprehensive and balanced, China stands for effective disarmament and arms control, and endeavors to maintain global strategic stability."