Defense News
10/10/2011
China
Strengthens Vehicle Family, Expands Joint Ops
By WENDELL MINNICK
TAIPEI — Mechanization remains the
core of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) kit acquisitions as it
adds a new family of armored vehicles and sharpens its abilities to conduct
joint operations while improving command and control.
The PLA is introducing
modern ground force weapons into all military regions, said Dennis Blasko, author
of the book “The Chinese Army Today.” The PLA is improving its tracked infantry
fighting vehicles (IFV), armored personnel carriers (APC), main battle tanks
and artillery. At present, about 25 percent to 33 percent of these vehicles and
artillery are new types or variants and older equipment is being upgraded with
new electronic, computer and communications equipment, he said.
The PLA’s ability
to adopt a new family of armored vehicles in a relatively short time and
integrate them into effective combined arms formations is impressive, said Gary
Li, an analyst at U.K.-based Exclusive Analysis.
A series of
amphibious-capable IFVs, such as the new Type 04, based on the BMP3, has
improved the PLA’s multiterrain capabilities for armored infantry.
“There is usually
a battalion assigned to every armored regiment and this allows them to keep up
better than before,” Li said. Another big improvement has been the introduction
of the Type 05 family of advanced amphibious assault vehicles, which comes with
a 30mm cannon, 105mm self-propelled assault gun and 122mm self-propelled
howitzer. Some of these modifications have been spotted in service with elite coastal
amphibious mechanized infantry divisions.
China has taken
the chassis of the older six-wheeled WZ551 (Type 92) and built the PTL-02 100mm
selfpropelled anti-tank gun, which is now assigned to anti-tank companies of
infantry artillery battalions and regiments, Li said.
There is also a
new family of ZBD-09 eight-wheeled APCs “well on its way to becoming the PLA’s
Stryker family” of APCs, though it lacks a 122mm artillery variant at this
time, said Richard Fisher, an analyst for the International Assessment and
Strategy Center in Washington.
“Units based on
these vehicles may also form the basis of the PLA’s first medium-weight
airmobile units formed around new C-17 size transports expected before the end
of the decade,” he said.
Main battle tanks
continue to be of great interest to China, despite a global trend of moving
away from large land battles using tanks.
Making Strides
“The PLA has
finally improved its capabilities to fight a late-20thcentury mechanized war,
just when it’s going out of fashion elsewhere,” Li said. However, there have
been problems with new tank developments.
“The Type 99 has
been much written about, but it remains a bit of a problem child,” he said,
including an underpowered engine and insufficient countermeasure systems. “The
fact that a new Type 99A2 is already rolling out suggests that the PLA was not
happy with their ‘Abrams killer.’” The Army continues to rely on 1,500 Type 96
tanks and about 400 older T-99 tanks.
“Although not as advanced as the Type
99, the Type 96 class has roughly upgraded the PLA’s armored forces from the
1950s to the 1990s,” he said.
China has also
greatly improved its artillery, with rockets now featuring self-guided
sensor-fused munitions similar to the U.S.-built Skeet system, Fisher said. Overall,
the PLA appears to be standardizing its artillery caliber to 122mm, 155mm and
300mm.
Frontline units are using new, heavy, self-propelled guns such as the
155mm PLZ-05, 122mm PLZ-07, and the 300mm PHL-03 multilaunch system, which
“have given the PLA a good dose of firepower,” he said.
The mechanization
effort is intertwined with the PLA’s two main vectors: jointness and
informationalization. But joint operations are still difficult for the PLA,
Blasko said.
“In fact, the PLA is still experimenting in conducting many joint
and combined arms operations that other advanced militaries have conducted for
decades,” he said. Since 2006, a main emphasis in ground force training has
been “transregional” exercises in which units from one military region (MR)
move across MR boundaries to train in another MR, he said.
The PLA is also
exploiting information technologies, including the use of laptops and
smartphones, Fisher said.
“Digital connectivity from national command
authority to the grunt at the front is regularly depicted in propaganda
coverage,” he said. The PLA has improved communication with more landline
fiber-optic cable networks and satellite communications, which are now being
supplemented by skywave (electromagnetic waves) and UAV systems.
The introduction
of new equipment into the PLA is very important to the Chinese for “prestige
reasons” as it “presents the appearance of a modern, capable force,” Blasko
said. However, the PLA leadership understands that their “biggest shortfall” is
not new equipment, but training personnel to operate and maintain the
equipment.
The PLA also
understands that the PLA command-and-control structure and many headquarters
are still not organized and streamlined for modern operations.
“Therefore, it
continues to modify force structures, which can be disruptive until everybody
is familiar with the new organizations,” Blasko said.
The PLA sees this as a
long-term process to build organizations to adequately command and control
their new capabilities. The result will be “force reductions in the next
decade,” especially if the training for “transregional” exercises satisfies
senior leaders, Blasko said.
