Limbering Up the Dragon - Operational Training in the PLA

With the PLA moving to an all arms mechanised force and reorganising its forces to perform independent action at the operational level, training has become more sophisticated with joint operational planning required as well as training areas to allow for the PLA’s emphasis on ‘informationalised warfare’.[i] Combined arms training requires large instrumented exercise areas and in the past few years the PLA has invested considerable resources in developing new combat ranges and training centres to develop and train its forces for modern joint operations. Based on the instrumented US United States Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, the PLA hopes to create a force capable of engaging and defeating enemy forces on the periphery as well as offensive operations against Taiwan. [ii]

The NTC has from its beginning had a dedicated opposing forces unit to act as the enemy equipped with dedicated OPFOR forces and equipment to train the US Army against Soviet forces.[iii] The United States military incorporates ‘Red Teams’ into its planning and crisis-decision planning process to look at possible counters to their actions and incorporate changes before they could become a reality.[iv] Opposing forces training had three benefits: it adds realism not found it set- piece scenarios; this realism, which takes the form of changing battlefield conditions, causes commanders to use initiative to accomplish their missions; and thirdly, it exposes troops to new tactics, theoretically the tactics of a potential enemy.[v]

The PLA adopted the idea creating its first OPFOR unit in the Nanjing Military Region (MR) in the 1980s and provided OPFOR personnel for other military regions.[vi] 84 established a large simulation centre in Beijing.[vii] The Shenyang MR has a site for tactical logistics simulation training system where two divisions can practice information warfare exercises.[viii] Generally in the PLA, OPFOR units are referred to as ‘confrontational’ (duikang xing) or ‘blue’ (lanse) forces.[ix] The Shenyang MR contains a large sized OPFOR unit to enable exercises at the ‘higher levels’, with the Nanjing MR high technology OPFOR unit is known as the ‘Black Panther Unit’ (hei bao bu dui). [x] Like the NTC the PLA has visually modified some of their armored vehicles, the early ones including the Type 62 light tank visually modified (VISMOD) to represent the US M48 medium tank.[xi] Chinese media reports on recent exercises have shown OPFOR units honing their skills and the units they face all over China. These range from special forces attacks on high value targets to anti-invasion techniques in the recent Peace Mission 2005 exercise with Russian military forces. The latter was more for show as mechanised forces overrun airborne forces if in the area and will decimate a beach head if given the opportunity.
The PLA has created a divisional land forces training areas similar to Ford Polk using technology developed by the Nanjing Research Institute on Simulation Technique (NRIST). Called the digital directional (asset tracking) system, it utilises GPS tracking, audio-visual frequency compression and digital communication techniques, and could be used as a battle management system.[xii] This shows that the Chinese military is serious in having its forces to operate seamlessly in joint operations.

The PLA, like the late Soviet army, keeps the majority of its equipment in store for use in war, utilising earlier versions and small amounts of more recent equipment in training. Although this ensures new equipment in times of mobilisation it leads to problems of personnel not being trained on the equipment issued on mobilisation and equipment breakdowns due to poorly kept batteries, hydraulic fluids and deteriorated fan belts if not stored correctly,. This happened prior to Russian attack on Grozny invasion of Chechnya in late December 1994. The mass movement of military equipment and working the equipment up, such as bore sighting tank guns, alerts an opponent to a mobilisation.

To enable advanced joint counter-terrorist training the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Regional Anti-Terror Training School in the Midong New District in the capital, Urumqi started construction in August 2005. The first phase, planned to be completed in mid-2010 at a cost of 700 Million RMB, will be used by regional police forces to research and develop methods to defeat separatists. Covering 367 hectares it will include facilities for advanced driving training and anti-hijacking training of aircraft and trains.[xiii]

The question is does the PLA forces learn from battles with OPFOR units or are they more for developing new tactics, than training units for combat. The PLA certainly evaluates foreign militaries translating their documents and foreign military journals, having a whole unit used in that role. Foreign officers are sent to study overseas as well as reports from defense attaches and visitors to military conferences, seminars and exhibitions. The mind set however may be different. Can a schooling system, that prides itself on rote learning, and not learning how to judge, challenge and think, produce a force agile enough in thinking to perform in a modern high speed war. Can the PLA produce commanders that can think inside an opponent’s decision cycle?

The PLA has been expending considerable resources to improve their command and control systems. To test the systems out the PLA recently conducted a major joint command and control exercise linking units from the centre linking units from the Beijing, Guangzhou, Shengyang and Chengdu military regions. The headquarters is being run from the Guangzhou MR headquarters ‘to work out the deployment and cooperation between the Army, Navy and Air Force when "separated by hundreds of kilometres’ in the Guangzhou region.[xiv] Another article noted about this exercise that: ‘To ensure the joint training command is up to speed, various arms and services and various units are linked to each other via networks with their equipment capable of effective coordinated operation.? Based on the principle of ‘integrating military with locality and field locations with fixed locations’, they set up multiple sets of fiber-optics transmission systems and use the method of integrated platforms, integrated networks, and integrated applications to connect the major command systems in the cooperation zone, thus ensuring that commanders at all levels are able to transmit and receive telegrams, data, and images real-time at their levels of command. By using uniform interface, upgrading and designing software, and adopting uniform technical specifications, they integrated their existing equipment and information resources and built a complete set of field electronics information networks, thus realizing interconnection of different information equipment and information systems and effectively raising the quality of joint training.’[xv]

The importance of training the C2 systems in the Guangzhou MR cannot be underestimated as the headquarters responsible for the South China Sea and Taiwan. On operations it is imperative that everyone uses the same procedures and commands and the exercise showed that the different commands were not using the same standard operating procedures. Hu Jintao and the Central Military Commission have reinforced the need for standard operating procedures and called for all headquarters units to read and adopt the new regulations for operating headquarters units.[xvi] This exercise exposed flaws which artificial command post exercises of the past did not. The enemy was not allowed to win and cause problems for the losing staff’s promotion prospects. Peace Mission 2005 held with the Russians last year was so stage managed that it lost any relevance for operational training except for the TU-95MS cruise missile carriers, and continuation training of airdropping procedures. With the PLA starting to develop their own version of the 1980s Soviet Operational Manoeuvre Groups and the US Army’s mechanised and armoured divisions in Desert Strom, training in command and control and battle management systems will be intensified.[xvii] The structure of the PLA’s new self-propelled gun (SPG) battalion, itself a copy of the US Army’s Paladin SPG battalion, is a portent of the increasing reliance on automated systems fire control systems linked in with signals intelligence and unmanned air vehicles.[xviii] This will require more specialist training and either extending the contract time and an ever increasing reliance on volunteers, increasing the wage bill accordingly. The PLA has yet to decide how it will keep the personnel it has invested its training expenditure on in an ever increasing market driven economy wanting people with those same skills. Many Chinese appear to still believe the old adage, Haotie bu zading, haozi bu dangbing, ‘Good iron is not used to make nails, good sons should not become soldiers.[i]

[i] . It has also been translated as ‘so good sons did not enlist for the battlefields. Wong, C.S. A Cycle of Chinese Festivities, Malaysia Publishing House, Singapore, 1967, p. 97.

[i] . Niu Junfeng,. ‘Chinese Army speeds up tempo in transformation’, PLA Daily on-line, 27 January 2006.

[ii] . For a history of the National Training Center see Herling, M.P. & Boiselle, J. ‘Coming of age in the Desert: The NTC at 20’, Military Review, September/October 2001.

[iii] . Ibid.

[iv]. Malone, T.G. & Schaupp, R.E. ‘The “Red Team”: Forging a Well-Conceived Contingency Plan’, Aerospace Power Journal, Vol. XVI, Number 2, Summer 2002,
pp. 22 – 33.

[v] . Blasko, D.J., Klapakis, P.T. & Corbett, J.F. ‘Training Tomorrow’s PLA: A Mixed Bag of Tricks’, China Quarterly, Number 146, April-June 1996, p. 497.

[vi] . ‘Report on PLA ‘Opposition Force’ Exercise’, Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao, 16 March 1998, p. 10.

[vii] . Kondapalli, S. ‘Towards a Lean and Mean Army: Aspects of China’s Ground Force
Modernisation’, Strategic Analysis, Vol. 26, Number 4, October-December 2002, p. 471.

[viii] . Foreign Bulletin Information Service FTS19971227000149 dated 27 December 1997.

[ix] . Blasko et al, op. cit., p. 491, fn.4.

[x] . Ibid.

[xi] . ‘Haoyu zhishijie runwu xiwusheng ____ 62shi qinxing tankede gaijin guocheng yutedian’, Tanke zhangjia cheliang, 2005 Niandi, 12 Qi, Zhongdi 238,p. 6.

[xii] . Wu Xiaochun, NRIST Keeps Forging Ahead’, Military Training & Simulation News,
Volume 5, Issue 5, October 2003, pp. 36 & 37.

[xiii] . Li Xin. ‘China Begins Construction of Regional Ant-Terror Training School in Xinjiang’,
Urimqi Tanshan Wang, 30 August 2005.

[xiv] . ‘News-Foreign Armies’, Krasnaya Zvezda on-line, 10 March 2006.

[xv] . Peng Zecheng & Zhang Kejin. ‘PLA Holds Joint Military Exercises in 4 Military Regions’, Renmin Wang, 2 March 2006.
[xvi] . Xie Gang and Liu Xing'an. ‘PLA urged to earnestly study and implement new
Regulations on Military Headquarters’, PLA Daily on-line, 30 March 2006.

[xvii] . ‘Tuo Mao: The PLA’s New Armour Heavy Corps’, GI Zhou Newsletter Number 36,
11 November 2005.

[xviii] . ‘Zhongguo PLZ45 155haomi huoqiangjia jingxinbianhua’, Bingqi Zhishi, 2006 Niandi, 1Qi, Zhongdi 219, pp. 28 – 31.