One of the most interesting topics broached in the “China’s Military Strategy” white paper released last month, at least from my perspective, does not seem to have received any attention in Western coverage or analysis of the document to date. Consider the following; underlined emphasis is mine.
In Section III: “Active Defense Guidelines”
“To implement the
military strategic guideline of active defense in the new situation, China’s
armed forces will innovate basic operational doctrines. In response to security
threats from different directions and in line with their current capabilities,
the armed forces will adhere to the principles of flexibility, mobility and
self-dependence so that “you fight your way and I fight my way.” Integrated
combat forces will be employed to prevail in system-vs-system operations
featuring information dominance, precision strikes and joint operations.”
…and
shortly thereafter:
“To implement
the military strategic guideline of active defense in the new situation,
China’s armed forces will uphold the following principles… to employ strategies
and tactics featuring flexibility and mobility, give full play to the
overall effectiveness of joint operations, concentrate superior forces, and
make integrated use of all operational means and methods.”
In Section IV: “Building and Development of China’s
Armed Forces” under “Military Force Building Measures”
“Innovating
military theories. Under the guidance of the CPC’s innovative theories, China’s
armed forces will intensify their studies of military operations, probe into
the mechanisms of winning modern wars, innovate strategies and tactics
featuring mobility and flexibility, and develop theories on military
building in the new situation, so as to bring into place a system of advanced
military theories commensurate with the requirement of winning future wars.”
The terms “flexibility” and “mobility” appear to be
new in this edition; I couldn’t find them in the English versions of the 2010
and 2013 papers. Their use in the first above example alongside the term
“self-dependence” to explain the idea of “you fight your way and I fight my
way” leads me to think the Chinese might be talking about distributed operations.
Left unsaid (unsurprisingly) is just how far down
the chain of command this doctrine would apply, and just how much
decision-making authority would be delegated to those lower levels. Distributed
operations depend heavily upon decentralized command and control rooted in
methods such as mission command
and command by negation. Tactical units or groupings might be physically
dispersed in the battlespace, but they aren’t realizing their full combat
potential if their on-scene commanders are under the tight control of a higher
echelon commander.
It follows that forces conducting distributed
operations must use some form of networking to enable vertical command and control, plus horizontal collaboration and cooperation. The networking approach used matters greatly.
There’s no reference in the paper to the potentially
dramatic PLA command and control philosophical shifts that would seem to be
necessary for distributed operations. If anything, the paper’s frequent
reiterations of the importance of the Party’s total control over the PLA highlights
a possible source of factors that might affect command and control
decentralization.
It would be interesting to see if the words
“flexibility” and mobility” have been used in other authoritative PLA documents
or in PLA-affiliated professional journals over the past few years in apparent
reference to distributed operations—or if they begin appearing in such sources in
that context over the next few years. Likewise, it would be interesting to see
if other PLA sources begin making oblique references to something akin to
distributed operations (if they haven’t already). Given the command and control
implications of a PLA move to embrace some form of distributed operations, this
bears watching.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author
and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official
positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do
not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any
U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.