Category The Chinese Air Force

As is so often the case following an unsuccessful war, U. S. military lead­ers entered the post-Vietnam era with a strong conviction that they needed to reform their institutions. Morale in the U. S. Army, in particular, was seriously damaged, having fought “a series of battles that were, at best, tactical stale­mates,” and having sunk into “a deep malaise brought about by an unpopu­lar war, an inequitable draft system, a progressive unraveling of small-unit discipline, and a severe questioning of the competence and integrity of its senior leaders.”51 Air Force leaders were also deeply disturbed by the Viet­nam experience. While many of them clung to the belief that Linebacker II demonstrated that the United States could have won the war had President Johnson allowed the Air Force to conduct an intense bombardment of the 94 targets it proposed in the very beginning, others, particularly those in TAC where most of the war’s operational lessons had been learned, were less san­guine that strategic bombing would be the principal war-winning element of all future conflicts.52 But SAC and the bomber pilots still dominated the Air Force. As a result, Air Force doctrine throughout the remainder of the 1970s blandly sought to relate the role of airpower “more directly to national pol­icy and national security strategy,” suggesting that the independent, strategic application of airpower remained the paramount conceptual model in official U. S. Air Force thinking.53

It should not surprise that, as the U. S. Army turned its attention from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the central challenge of defending Western Europe from attack by a large, mechanized, and heavily-armored Soviet Army, it would find U. S. Air Force TAC to be a willing and necessary partner in its doc­trinal reforms. Still the bastard son of a SAC-dominated Air Force, TAC had also refocused on the challenges of fighting a war in Europe. During the Viet­nam War the Army and TAC had relearned the World War II lesson that they needed to cooperate with each other to be effective. So, following a series of exploratory meetings in late 1973, TAC and the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) opened a joint office to study integration issues—the Directorate of Air-Land Force Application (ALFA)—at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, in July 1975.54 It marked the beginning of a resurgence of thought about the use of airpower at the operational level of war.

During the next 15 years, the TAC-TRADOC relationship produced doc­trinal innovations in three phases. In the first, running until 1979, the part­ners worked out ways in which airpower would integrate with ground forces in support of the Army’s newly developed doctrine of Active Defense. However, as Army officers studied the new concept, they began to worry that it was too defensively oriented. Given the successive waves of Soviet formations that could be thrown at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, it would only be a matter of time before the defenders were overrun.55 Therefore, in the sec­ond phase of doctrine development starting about 1980, Army planners began considering ways to extend the battlefield to engage second – and third-eche­lon Soviet forces before they could be brought to bear. As the primary means available for delivering firepower in the deep battle area would be airpower, this required developing procedures to closely coordinate air interdiction strikes with those from Army deep fire assets, such as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), and with closer fires from artillery and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), while also providing CAS to U. S. and Allied troops in con­tact with Soviet forces. The Army called the new concept “AirLand Battle Doc­trine.” Further development over the next several years led to the third phase of innovation emerging in the mid-1980s: the evolution of AirLand Battle Doc­trine into an offensive, deep-battle concept emphasizing close integration of air – power with high-speed ground maneuver operations.56

While all of this was happening, the U. S. Air Force was undergoing a transition in leadership—fighter pilots were beginning to outnumber bomber pilots in the highest ranks of the service. Due to the fact that more fighter pilots had seen combat in Korea and Vietnam than had bomber pilots, the majority of rated officers favored by promotion boards in succeeding years hailed from the tactical air forces. By the 1960s the effects of these pressures were beginning to be felt in the lower general officer ranks, and by the 1970s a growing num­ber of three – and four-star generals had come from fighter cockpits. Yet even as late as when the ALFA stood up in 1975, “bomber generals still outnumbered fighter generals on the Air Staff by two to one, and the major (four-star) com­mand positions by four to three.”57 But that ratio was finally about to change. By 1982, fighter generals outnumbered bomber generals in the major com­mands and no bomber generals remained in Air Staff positions. The transi­tion culminated that year when a fighter pilot, General Charles A. Gabriel, was appointed Air Force Chief of Staff.58

The present understanding of the PLAAF’s development cannot be dis­associated from an overview of its early experiences. The doctrinal guidance for PLAAF development was Chinese defensive thinking. From the outset, the PLAAF leadership preferred to build an air force that possessed more fighters than bombers. Its theory was that the role of fighters dovetailed well with the defensive cast of Chinese military thought. Bombers attacked enemy countries and terri­tories—an aggressive act—but fighters were defensive in nature and, if success­ful in fending off attacks, would ensure air superiority.4 The PLAAF’s immediate mission, therefore, was to attain air superiority over the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, provide support to the planned amphibious assault on Taiwan, and then develop itself into a force capable of defending China’s airspace and waters.

The Korean War provided the impetus for the rapid expansion of the air force in both aviation personnel and equipment. A large number of officers and troops were transferred from ground forces to form 26 aviation divisions, four independent regiments, and eight aviation and three mechanical schools operat­ing throughout the conflict on the Korean Peninsula.5 The existing ground force structure was simply grafted onto the air force, and army officers were chosen to command the air force. The PLAAF leadership was accustomed to believe that the building of an air force on the foundation of the ground forces was a nec­essary principle for its future success. Thus, its primary mission was to provide support for ground troops, and the air force would take the victories of ground operations as its own.6 The air force was created as an independent service of the PLA under the direct control of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the highest military authority of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).7 This ground-centric army bias accounts for the PLAAF leadership’s inclination at the time to perceive the air force as a support unit of the PLA. They did not consider airpower essential in a strategic sense, valuing it only for the tactical support it could provide to the ground forces during operations.8 Such thinking, moreover, justified an army-centric and – dominated PLA system that subsequently pre­vented the air force from operating as an independent service.

The Korean War experience was a driving force for the PLAAF to fur­ther emphasize air defense and procurement of fighters to constitute the larg­est and most important element of the Chinese air force. The Chinese lead­ers gleaned a mixed understanding of airpower from the Korean conflict. While recognizing America’s air superiority, Chinese leaders discounted the role airpower had played. They found it particularly interesting that air bom­bardment inflicted fewer casualties upon Communist forces than ground fire. Given their confidence in the human factor—that men could overcome weap – ons—and their own guerrilla war experience, they remained convinced that PLA ground forces could overwhelm stronger opponents and win any future war.9 It is thus not surprising that Chinese political leaders and generals main­tained their view that future wars would be conducted in the context of ground operations, with airpower used to supplement the power of the army. This air defense experience thus resulted in the PLAAF’s continuing to emphasize an air defense strategy and the development of fighter planes, radar, and ground antiaircraft systems, while devoting only a small portion of the overall force structure to delivering limited air-to-surface ordnance.

Throughout the 1950s, the PLAAF constantly engaged in air combat against the Nationalist Chinese air force for the control of airspace over the coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces (right across the strait from Tai­wan). Air battles over the Taiwan Strait intensified in the summer of 1958.10 As during the Korean War, the PLAAF took a passive stance and waited to respond to intrusions by the Nationalist air force, which was much smaller, but was thus free to choose the time and method of aerial combat. The PLAAF, by contrast, had to depend on ground control intercept (GCI) to scramble its fighters. Furthermore, the capability of the air force was restricted by politi­cal considerations and the limited range of the MiG-17 fighter. Nevertheless, operations against the Nationalists over the southeast coastal areas in the 1950s gave the Chinese valuable experience in employing airpower in air defense.

This trend continued into the late 1950s and then the 1960s as one major focus of the PLAAF’s day-to-day activity was constantly scrambling its fight­ers to intercept intruding Nationalist and American aircraft, many of them spy planes (in sequence, the McDonnell F2H-2P, Lockheed RF-80C, Lockheed P2V-5, Martin P4M, North American RF-86A/F, Republic RF-84F, North American RF-100A, Martin RB-57A/D, McDonnell RF-101A, various Lock­heed U-2s, Lockheed RF-104G, and unmanned Ryan Firebee drones that routinely flew over Chinese airspace), but also engaging and shooting down aircraft that accidently approached or overflew its borders, including, shortly after the Korean War, a Cathay Pacific DC-4 airliner, and several American aircraft shot down during the Vietnam War.11

The incidents of intruding overflights took place in the midst of an upsurge in political radicalism within the PRC that emphasized political fac­tors and the promotion of Mao’s cult of personality. The downing of every intruder was described more like a political victory than a military one. Cele­brations were held and awards were given to those involved in combat actions. Senior party and state leaders, including Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai, always received the men responsible for the shoot-downs, making head­line news across the country. Senior military leaders also used these events to promote the air force, proclaiming that “all military services must learn from the air force.”12 Chinese accounts of the PLAAF’s role in these conflicts, including a claim that the PLAAF is the only air force in the world to have ever defeated the U. S. Air Force (USAF), have become important components of the service tradition, continuing to influence the Chinese air force to think of itself in a continuum linking the past to the present, and thence to the future.13

The PLAAF’s logistics support system (й’ШЖШФФО consists of six pri­mary components: materials (ЙЙ), finances (ИШІАЙ.), medical services (ій ■RB), equipment maintenance and repair (Ш&ШШ), transportation (Й®ш$і), and engineering (ifM).115 These are managed by the second-level departments within the PLAAF Logistics Department’s system, down to the regiment level. Of particular interest are the field stations (ЙЩ) that support air regiments. According to PLAAF 2010, a field station is an independent logistics support unit subordinate to the air division. Depending on their location and function, some field stations can also be directly subordinate to an MRAF Headquarters. The commander (Щ^) serves as the airbase commander with responsibility for all facilities and operations. He also organizes the supply of materials and equip­ment to each tenant air regiment at the airbase and provides logistics support for flight operations and training. A field station has three components: a command staff, functional and administrative branches, and subordinate company-level organizations. Although the field station serves as the logistics support organi­zation for an air regiment, it also incorporates certain organizations within the Equipment Department system, such as munitions and air materiel.116

Kevin Pollpeter

On November 1, 2009, Chinese news outlets published an interview with People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Commander General Xu Qiliang that was interpreted by many as an official Chinese statement endors­ing the development of space weapons and the establishment of a space force based on the PLAAF. Xu proclaimed that the 21st century was “an informatized century” and “an air and space century.” Xu went on to say:1

The air and space era and information era have arrived at the same time and the domain of information and domain of space and air have become the new commanding height for international strategic com­petition. Considering the global trend of a new revolution in military affairs, competition among armed forces is moving toward the air and space domain and is extending from the aviation domain to near space and even deep space. Such a “shift” represents an irresistible trend, such an “expansion” is historically inevitable, and such development is irre­versible. In a certain sense, having control of air and space means having control of the ground, oceans, and the electromagnetic space, which also means having the strategic initiative in one’s hands.

In ground operations, the commanding height is to be found on the hill­top; in three-dimensional operations, the commanding height is to be found in the air. Since the air force’s “sphere of activity is high up in the heavens,” it is heaven’s favored one and boasts the combination of a sci­ence gene, an expedition gene, and a military gene. The air force is a young military service branch, yet its appearance on the scene has at once twisted the curve of the evolution of two-dimensional warfare and has quickly established a status that is on a par with the land force whose history goes back several thousand years and the naval force whose history goes back several hundred years. It has evolved from a supporting subordinate force into a decisive strategic force. Since the air force is a science – and technol­ogy-based service branch, it has always occupied the commanding height of knowledge…. On the surface of the earth, the area of land is limited and so is the area of oceans and seas, only the space and the sky have no limits.

In facing the particular nature of the developing competition in the domains of air and space, the people’s air force must establish a con­cept of air and space security, of air and space interests, and of air and space development. It must establish an air force that corresponds to our country’s building and development needs, that is in keeping with the development needs of the air and space age and that will help maintain regional stability and world peace by properly forging a sharp sword and shield capable of winning peace.

In order to develop an air force that is capable of carrying out this agenda, Xu advocated that the PLAAF should focus on carrying out the “historic mis­sions of our armed forces in the new century” by extending the “boundary of security” to “wherever there are national interests” and by building a ser­vice capable of winning an informatized war, integrating air and space, acquir­ing defensive and offensive capabilities, and developing reconnaissance, early warning, air strike, antimissile air defense, and strategic airlift and airdrop capabilities.2

Even though Xu did not explicitly propose that China develop antisat­ellite (ASAT) weapons, Xu’s call for the air force to forge a “sharp sword and shield capable of winning peace” and his assessment “of the inevitability of mil­itary competition in air and space” were widely interpreted as a call for the development of space weapons and for the PLAAF to be the PLA’s space force. Even the Chinese new agency Xinhua reported that Xu had advocated devel­oping “an air force with integrated capabilities for both offensive and defensive operations in space as well as in the air”3

The Chinese Foreign Ministry, reacting to the interview, denied that China would ever participate in a space arms race. According to foreign min­istry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, “China has all along upheld the peaceful use of outer space. We oppose the weaponization of outer space or a space arms race. China has never and will not participate in an outer space arms race in any form. The position of China on this point remains unchanged”4

Speaking 10 days after his interview, Xu clarified but did not retract his remarks. He stated that China’s policy toward outer space had always been con­sistent and that the air force would firmly carry out the policies of the coun­try. It supported using outer space for peaceful purposes and it opposed car­rying out an arms race in space and deploying weapons in outer space. China also followed the principle of peace, development, cooperation, and peaceful exploration and utilization. At the same time, Xu stated that his earlier remarks were an “objective analysis” that recognized that “some countries are develop­ing weapons for space deployment, and some phenomena of not being secure have appeared in outer space”5

Xu Qiliang’s remarks in his November 1, 2009, interview offer provoca­tive insights into the PLAAF’s attitudes toward the use of space, and Xu’s state­ments regarding space are supported by a substantial body of literature written by PLAAF researchers in the years preceding the interview. This correlation between Xu’s remarks and PLAAF research indicates that PLAAF doctrine is shaped by an interaction between PLAAF scholars and PLAAF leadership. This doctrine regards space-based assets as the primary source of information and the seizure of the initiative in outer space as a prerequisite for victory in the domains of the ground, air, and sea. The necessity to seize the initiative in outer space requires the PLAAF to achieve space supremacy—defined as the ability to use space and deny its use to others.

Moreover, the correlation of this research and Xu’s remarks indicates that the PLAAF has committed itself to become both an air and space force in which the PLAAF is the main orchestrator of space-enabled operations. Under the rubric of an “integrated air and space force,” the PLAAF describes itself as the service most responsible for the PLA’s space enterprise. In this role, the PLAAF will be the primary entity facilitating network-centric warfare and jointness in the PLA and the main defender of China’s interests in outer space. Because of this, PLAAF analysts argue that the air force is the ideal institution to lead the PLAs space efforts. Consequently, the doctrine of integrated air and space operations is not only about how the PLAAF should conduct future operations, but also about the PLAAF position within the PLA hierarchy.

The fullest analysis and comprehension of Xu Qiliang’s remarks and PLAAF writings on the role of space in the PLAAF strategy of integrated air and space operations (Й^—ФІТіК) first require examining the role of space in the strategic guidance of the “New Historic Missions.” This examination will provide context for the importance of space in future operations and the organizational changes proposed by PLAAF researchers to effectively carry out space missions.

One might have expected the ascendance of fighter generals to result in the U. S. Air Force abandoning the concept of airpower as an independent war­winning instrument, but that was not the case. In 1988, Colonel John Warden, an F-15 pilot, published a book entitled, The Air Campaign: Planning for Com­bat, based on a thesis he wrote as a student at National Defense University.59 Warden’s argument in that treatise was reasonably evenhanded, balancing the need for offensive and defensive operations and conceding that in some conflicts the chief use of airpower might be “the destruction—or neutralization through maneuver—of some or all of the enemy’s forces.”60 Nevertheless, the very title of the book ruffled Army feathers in the suggestion that an air campaign might be fought separate from an Army-led joint campaign. To the Army’s growing irrita­tion, Warden’s ideas would soon become much more provocative.

By 1990, Warden had become chief of Checkmate, the Headquarters Air Force strategy analysis center. There, he developed the idea that an enemy state is a system, somewhat akin to a human body, with eyes, nerve centers, a brain, and other subsystems to provide infrastructure, organic essentials, and defense mechanisms. Warden proposed that one need not destroy an enemy’s infra­structure, organic essentials, or even his defenses to defeat him. The most effi­cient way to victory would be to attack selected “centers of gravity” (COGs), key nodes in essential subsystems, particularly the enemy’s brain and nervous system.61 If the correct COGs were struck simultaneously, the enemy system would be unable to adjust to compensate for the failure of multiple functions. It would go into “strategic paralysis” or collapse. Warden asserted that pre­cision weapons had provided airpower the ability to carry out such “parallel attacks” and thereby defeat enemy systems quickly, with less blood and trea­sure expended on both sides.62

Another prominent airpower thinker who emerged in the same era was David Deptula. As a lieutenant colonel, he was Warden’s deputy in Checkmate and, after the latter’s retirement, continued in the Air Force, reaching general officer rank.63 Deptula, who served in Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice’s Secretarial staff group, had been principal author of the service’s Global Reach – Global Power strategic planning framework, issued in June 1990 and subse­quently forming the conceptual framework for the restructuring of the Air Force over the next 3 years. Deptula championed Warden’s ideas and carried them a step forward, emphasizing the need to conduct “effects-based opera­tions”—that is, identifying the correct COGs and striking them to create the system effects Warden advocated, versus striking targets simply to destroy the enemy’s materiel.64

Warden and Deptula got the first test of their ideas in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, which hinted strongly at the conceptual convergence of opera­tional and strategic airpower. At the request of Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General John M. Loh, the Checkmate team developed an air-targeting con­cept called “Instant Thunder” which they believed would be sufficient to force the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. The Instant Thunder plan entailed rapid, intense attacks on command, control, and communications systems to paralyze Sad­dam’s ability to coordinate his forces and additional attacks on industry and infrastructure targets to compel him to withdraw from Kuwait. Warden briefed the plan to Loh, then to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Pow­ell, and then, at Powell’s request, to U. S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) commander General Norman Schwarzkopf, who requested that Warden fly to Saudi Arabia and brief the U. S. Central Air Force (USCENTAF) Commander, Lieutenant General Charles Horner.65 Horner accepted elements of the plan as a starting point, but considered it inadequate as it stood, putting its emphasis on the putative coercive effects of strategic attack without considering whether the Iraqi army, if unmolested from the air, might go on the offensive. There­fore, he sent Warden back to Washington, though retaining Deptula in theater to work with USCENTAF planners under the direction of Brigadier General Buster Glosson to flesh out a broader air strategy in support of the USCENT – COM plan for Operation Desert Storm.66

On January 17, 1991, USCENTCOM launched Desert Storm, and for the next 38 days, coalition airpower subjected Iraq to one of the most concentrated aerial bombardments seen in history. Over the first week, air strikes focused largely on strategic targets in the original Instant Thunder plan, dismembering the air defense system and hitting electrical power and command, control, and communications nodes in and around Baghdad. Then the emphasis shifted to interdiction targets and, increasingly, to Iraq’s Republican Guard and regular army forces in southern Iraq and Kuwait.67

On February 24, USCENTCOM launched its ground offensive, follow­ing 38 days of air attack. With AirLand Battle Doctrine guiding U. S. Army operations, airpower was employed in support of coalition ground forces while continuing strategic attacks against Iraqi command, control, and infra­structure targets. The application of combined arms was devastatingly effec­tive. One hundred hours into the ground operation, with Kuwait liberated and Iraqi forces in a desperate rout to escape envelopment in the now famous “Hail Mary” maneuver, all political objectives were accomplished and President George H. W Bush called the offensive to a halt.

Over the years, the PLAAF developed a unique political culture that has not only influenced its development, but is crucial to understanding the Chinese air force. The PLAAF is accustomed to use the Chinese leadership’s instructions and speeches as guidance to define its doctrine, mission, and force structure in order to maintain political support. This PLAAF tradition continues to influ­ence thinking and efforts to pursue development of a modern air force. Despite their long revolutionary experience, Chinese leaders, particularly Mao Zedong, the founder and strategist of the PLA, had no knowledge of air and naval war­fare. Even so, the PLAAF codifies their sporadic instructions as profound mil­itary thought guiding the development of Chinese airpower.14 This approach is attributed partly to traditional Chinese filial piety and partly to the Chinese Communist Party’s highly doctrinaire and centralized institutional system.

At the onset of its establishment, the PLAAF used the chairman’s mes­sage of encouragement to the air force, “creating a powerful air force to elim­inate the remnant enemy [the KMT legacy forces that had evacuated the mainland for Taiwan] and consolidate national defense,” to characterize the air force’s contemporary and future task.15 While recognizing the importance of airpower in national consolidation and development, none of the Chinese leaders offered any systematic thinking on the air force and airpower employ­ment. One common view shared by these political and military leaders was the use of air force to ensure command of China’s airspace through air defense. Although a few of them occasionally talked about the use of bombers to strike deeply into the enemy’s rear positions, they never seemed to imply any offen­sive action beyond China’s own territory.16

Studies of the military thoughts of Chinese leaders on the air force and its employment dominated the PLAAF’s theoretical inquiry. As a result, for most of its existence until recently, no serious efforts were made to explore the differ­ing means of employing airpower within the framework of China’s defense strat­egy. Even now, PLAAF studies still incorporate the military thoughts of these past political leaders in their current pursuit of modern airpower theory. Thus, PLAAF thinking and doctrine are still imbued with the PLAs traditional politi­cal jargon. This at-best pseudoscientific approach accounts for the PLAAF’s fail­ure to ascribe the military thoughts of the earlier leaders to the PLAAF’s long­time perception of itself as a homeland defense force, whose task was, first and foremost, to defend China’s airspace and thus maintain only a limited role and modest capability to support the army and navy.17 The legacy of the Chinese leadership’s minimalist understanding of the actual role that airpower can play is evident in the PLAAF’s self-perpetuating view of itself in an unbroken string of memories about victories and heroism in the past, including a claim that it is the only air force in the world to have ever defeated the USAF. The PLAAF’s self-aggrandizing depiction, however intellectually dishonest it may be, has nev­ertheless become an important component of its service tradition.18

The PLAAF’s Equipment Department and its second-level departments down to the regiment level are responsible for the PLAAF’s equipment man­agement system (^^вИФФІ).117 Historically, the equipment management sys­tem dealt primarily with aircraft maintenance, while the logistics system dealt with nonaviation equipment. For example, the fourth PLAAF department was known as the Aeronautical Engineering Department (КЙІШнР) and then the Equipment Technical Department until 1998.118 In 1998, when the PLA created the General Armament Department, the PLAAF merged support for all equip­ment from birth to death into the Equipment Department. The structure of the current Equipment Department was discussed earlier. The PLAAF equipment management system also includes military representative offices assigned to regions and individual nonmilitary research institutes and factories.119

The Air Force Encyclopedia states that the primary purpose of equipment technical support is to inspect, refurbish, maintain, repair, and

improve the PLAAF’s equipment and weapons systems for all its branches and specialty units.120 These components are managed by the second-level depart­ments within the PLAAF Equipment Department’s system down to the regi­ment level. As noted above, however, some of these functions for aircraft sup­port are incorporated under the field station’s management. Officers involved in this system come from the equipment and technical support career tracks.

Xu’s comment that “the boundary of security should extend to wher­ever there are national interests”6 is firmly rooted in the strategic guidance pro­vided by the PLA under the banner of the “New Historic Missions.” The New Historic Missions were first introduced by President Hu Jintao in 2004—the same year the PLAAF introduced its concept of integrated air and space opera­tions—and ratified by the Communist Party in 2007. They direct the PLA to carry out four missions:

■ Guarantee Chinese Communist Party rule. The PLA is to remain the ultimate backer of the Communist Party.

■ Safeguard the strategic opportunity for national development. The PLA is to serve as a powerful defensive force that can deter aggres­sion against China and protect its national sovereignty and territorial integrity so that China may develop economically.

■ Safeguard national interests. The PLA must defend China’s interests, not only within its land borders, territorial waters, and territorial air space, but also in distant waters, outer space, and in the electromag­netic sphere.

■ Play an important role in world peace. China will maintain a defensive military strategy and will participate in United Nations peacekeeping missions and international cooperation on counterterrorism.

The New Historic Missions reflect the Chinese leadership’s intention to have the PLA protect the Communist Party’s and country’s interests by meet­ing the challenges of the 21st century. While the New Historic Missions direct the PLA to continue with its legacy missions of guaranteeing Communist Party rule and maintaining territorial integrity, they expand the PLAs missions in important ways. For the first time, the PLA is directed to defend China’s eco­nomic interests, not only within China’s borders but also in the new areas of distant waters, outer space, and the electromagnetic sphere. In this respect, these missions are partly aspirational, serving as a guide for the development of operational concepts and capabilities.

Space plays two roles in the Historic Missions context, constituting both a domain in which China has interests, and a domain through which China defends its interests. Not surprisingly, China’s interests in outer space are becoming more pronounced and varied as it becomes more vested in space. China’s increasingly robust and varied space program is made up of commu­nications satellites, remote-sensing satellites, and navigation and positioning satellites that not only provide military benefits but also commercial oppor­tunities. Communication satellites can relay voice and television transmis­sions and support credit card transactions. Remote-sensing data can be used in urban planning and environmental studies. Navigation and positioning sat­ellites have given rise to commercial and private navigation products and ser­vices. Outer space also holds vast natural resources, such as those deposited in asteroids or on the surface of the moon. One of the primary reasons for Chi­na’s lunar exploration program is to search for Helium-3, touted as a potential source of clean energy.7

Indeed, a common theme in Chinese writings is that outer space and its associated technologies are of increasing economic value. Chinese space industry representatives cite reports, such as those by The Space Foundation, that revenue from the global space industry increased 7 percent to $261.61 bil­lion in 2009.8 According to one source, the value of a spacecraft and rocket is $150-200 million. If a satellite is lost, not only is there the monetary loss of a satellite that cannot be easily replaced, there is also the loss of the services it provides.9

As a result, space takes on a much more strategic character than its mil­itary applications alone would suggest.10 PLAAF writers assert that if China does not develop space capabilities, it will neither be able to exploit the bene­fits of space nor will it be able to defend itself from threats from countries with strong space capabilities.11 Furthermore, those countries that have strong space capabilities will be able to garner higher international prestige and more influ­ence from which to promote military, economic, science and technology, and cultural interests.12

In fulfilling the Historic Missions, Xu states that the air force will face “numerous difficulties” in “scientifically planning” its innovative develop­ment.13 Indeed, air force analysts state that the service is required to transform itself from being homeland defense-oriented to being offensively and defen­sively capable, from being mechanized to being informatized, from being air – oriented to being air – and space-integrated, and from being a tactical and cam­paign-oriented force to being a strategic force.14

The concept of the PLAAF as a strategic air force was codified at the same time as the New Historic Missions during the 17th Communist Party Congress held in November 2007. The Party Congress called on the PLAAF to strive “to build a modernized strategic air force that will be compatible with the international stature of our country and capable of carrying out the historical mission of our armed forces”15 Being a strategic air force requires the PLAAF to participate in joint operations as well as independent strategic actions to support the military and national development strategy of the country.16 The PLAAF intends to carry out its strategic mission through the use of “integrated air and space operations.”

The dramatic effectiveness of coalition operations in Desert Storm set off a heated debate between U. S. military professionals as to which element of the plan was most responsible for the triumph. The Air Force was ebullient, its sen­timent captured by the U. S. Air Force Historian Richard P Hallion who wrote “Simply (if boldly) stated, airpower won the Gulf war”68 Army leaders, on the other hand, argued that airpower alone had failed to achieve coalition objec­tives—after 38 days of concentrated bombing, Iraqi forces remained in Kuwait until rooted out by ground forces. Even within the Air Force, officers debated whether the war’s successful outcome resulted more from the application of air – power against strategic targets or in support of coalition ground forces before and after the ground offensive began.69 Some maintained that Desert Storm sig­naled the onset of a “military-technical revolution” or “revolution in military affairs” (later simply called, “transformation”), while others argued it was just another benchmark in the evolutionary advance of U. S. military technologi­cal capabilities. But wherever individual airmen stood in the debate, the one thing on which nearly all of them agreed was that airpower had been instru­mental in winning the Gulf War and was destined to be the decisive force in all future conflicts. Afterward, two coercive air operations in the troubled Balkans not only reinforced airmen’s conviction that airpower had become the premier expression of American military might, but also convinced some U. S. politi­cal leaders, for the first time since the Vietnam War, that airpower could be wielded as a potent and convenient instrument of political coercion.

From August 30 to September 14, 1994, NATO carried out Operation Deliberate Force, the air campaign against Serbian forces in the Bosnian civil war. This operation was NATO’s response to a series of Serbian atrocities over the preceding months, which included attacks on UN peacekeepers and the sacking of Srebrenica, and culminated with the August 28 shelling of a Sara­jevo marketplace, killing 37 civilians and wounding 85 others.70 Over the next two weeks U. S. and allied aircraft struck Serbian military positions, allowing a combined ground force of Croatians, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Muslims to make territorial advances against the Serbs and ultimately compelling Ser­bian leaders to accept a NATO-brokered partition plan and enter formal peace negotiations in Dayton, Ohio.71 In this case, airpower was applied against oper­ational military forces in a way that created strategic effects.

Four and a half years later, NATO carried out another coercive air cam­paign, Operation Allied Force, in response to Serbia’s refusal to accept UN accords regarding the treatment of Albanian Muslim citizens in Kosovo. In this operation, running from March 24 to June 10, 1999, NATO air forces began by bombing Serbian army units in the province of Kosovo and then, as more strike aircraft arrived in theater, escalated the campaign in intensity and target selec­tion, moving to industrial and infrastructure targets in Serbia proper. After 78 days of bombing, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic withdrew his army and paramilitary forces from Kosovo and agreed to NATO terms. Although Milosevic’s capitulation was undoubtedly influenced by factors in addition to the bombing, airmen were quick to point out that, unlike prior cases, in this episode, conventional airpower had brought an adversary to terms before ground forces were engaged in the fight.72 Here, airpower was applied as an independent instrument, and it only achieved its effect after being redirected from tactical military targets to those historically categorized as “strategic.”

The consistency with which U. S. airpower was successfully employed in the 1990s only added to a growing confidence fostered by advances in technol­ogy during that period, resulting in acceleration in the development of war­fighting theory. The dramatic outcome of the Gulf War had already convinced many analysts that the combined effects of stealth technology and precision weapons had placed the United States on the cusp of a military transforma­tion. In the several years following the Gulf War, the United States crossed additional technological thresholds, adding even more to its military capabili­ties. The global positioning system (GPS) satellite constellation achieved full operational capability in 1995, providing precise position, navigation, and tim­ing data everywhere in the world and empowering a new generation of all­weather precision-guided munitions. Conventional forces were granted much more access to near real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data, providing them greater situational awareness than most adversar­ies they expected to encounter in future wars. And advances in computer net­working, supported by a worldwide, omni-present backbone of satellite com­munications, enabled an ever-increasing ability to network operational forces together to share situational awareness and coordinate their actions in high­speed maneuver warfare. All of this fed a new generation of transformation theory based on concepts of network-centric warfare (later called net-centric warfare or NCW) in which every platform would be a sensor and all operators would share information in near real-time.

Network-centric warfare marked a further convergence of airpower thought. It was theorized that command-and-control hierarchies would flat­ten to accelerate decisionmaking and flexibility, thereby maximizing the abil­ity to respond to rapid changes in the operational environment.73 Whether this is so, advocates and critics alike have since argued that such flattening would also effectively erase the lines between the operational and strategic levels of war. Strike aircraft directly supporting surface forces would create strate­gic effects. Aircraft striking strategic targets, such as command-and-control nodes, would often do so to inhibit the enemy’s ability to coordinate its mili­tary forces, thereby creating operational effects. All the while, networked sen­sors and communications would empower command authorities to monitor tactical operations in real-time and govern them directly whenever they chose to do so.74

These ideas had profound implications for the concept of airpower. As airpower is the most flexible, responsive, and far-ranging means of applying kinetic force, it would constitute the primary strike element of NCW in all applications across the breadth and depth of the battlespace. Airpower is fun­gible in target selection—strike assets tasked to service operational targets can be re-tasked against high-priority strategic targets en route when network sen­sors detect perishable intelligence on their whereabouts. In fact, strikers can be tasked against operational and strategic targets in the same sortie and can even launch before tasking and take target direction en route or while loitering in the battlespace. In the NCW concept, operational and strategic applications of airpower converge as one. Airpower as a concept was finally approaching unity… at least in theory.

The West tends to see the PLA as having too much autonomy in China’s civil-military relations. In fact, as commanders of a Party-controlled armed service, senior PLA leaders, socialized by the unique Party-army relationship that has also rewarded them with promotion to the higher ranks, are unlikely to seek greater autonomy. Thus the PLAs political culture subordinates the military to the Party leadership for decisions at the time when the use of force is considered. It is interesting to note that Chinese military thought today still regards the primary use of airpower as deterrence, deferring to the political leadership sole authority to determine whether, in fact, airpower should be used. The role the air force can play is thus more as a tool to serve national pol­icy than as a component of national policymaking.

There have been three major occasions in the PLAAF’s history during which the Chinese leadership has had to contemplate the employment of the air force and airpower beyond Chinese-controlled territory. The first was during the Korean War in February 1952. In that case, Zhou Enlai personally cancelled a PLAAF bombing mission aimed at Kimpo airfield near Seoul only minutes before takeoff. Zhou feared a Chinese raid south of the 38th parallel would upset an implicit mutual understanding that the United States would not extend its bombing campaign north beyond the Yalu River into Chinese territory.19

The second incident occurred during 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis when the Chinese leadership was very uncertain about the PLAAF’s strike capability. Again, Zhou raised concerns about potential Nationalist bombing retaliation against the mainland should the PLAAF undertake an air bombardment of Jin – men island. He felt that the inability of the PLAAF to reciprocate by bombing Taiwan in return would signal Chinese weakness to the world. He thus strongly advised the CMC not to bomb Jinmen.20

The last came during China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979, when the PLAAF engaged in a brief combat action against its southern neighbor. Despite several instances where the PLA ground forces requested air support, Beijing authorities refused to grant such permission lest the use of airpower escalate the conflict; instead, the General Staff ordered the army to rely exclusively on artillery fire support.21

These three episodes merit careful analysis for any inquiry into what role the PLAAF could potentially play in national policymaking. Political con­cerns and the insufficient capability of the air force constitute the true reason for the PLAAF to have undertaken no offensive roles in military actions since its establishment. Further examination suggests that the real problem was the Chinese leadership’s failure from the creation of the PRC in 1949 to appreci­ate the centrality of airpower in modern warfare and, hence, the critical role it could play. The PLAs subsequent war experience in Korea seemingly con­firmed the leadership’s position that airpower could have, and in fact had, only little impact on the victory claimed by China in that war. We should thus not be surprised that Chinese political and military leaders have long maintained the view that war will continue to be conducted in the context of dominant ground operations, with airpower used in a supporting role, to supplement the power of the army.

Furthermore, given their confidence in the human factor—that men could overcome weapons, a belief reinforced by their own guerrilla war expe – rience—Chinese leaders were convinced that their ground forces could over­whelm any opponent and win any war. Consequently, the PLAAF had long argued that ground operations would determine the air force’s contribution to final victory. The development of such thinking was supported by the objective reality confronting the PLAAF. While the PLAAF was one of the world’s larg­est air forces, its equipment was outdated, limited in capability, and not even equal to that of some countries surrounding China. Since the creation of the PLAAF, to address technological deficiencies and maintain the air force’s over­all combat capabilities, China favored an air force based on quantity instead of quality.22 When it did engage in aircraft development, the aircraft produced were outright copies or simple derivatives or extrapolations of Soviet designs such as the Ilyushin Il-28, Tupolev Tu-16, and the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG – 17, -19, and -21.23 The sheer numerical superiority of the PLAAF compared to its potential regional opponents convinced the Chinese that the PLA had built an adequate and credible air defense force capable of deterring and, if neces­sary, resisting any attack into Chinese air space.

Such a view was shattered by the dominant role airpower played in Desert Storm and the military conflicts since the 1991 Gulf War. Even so, one political legacy remains: the latest PLA campaign theory holds that the employment of airpower is more a political matter than a military one, sub­ordinate to the needs of China’s political and diplomatic struggles. If its use is required, it will be the political, not military, leadership that will make the decision. This perhaps explains why the development of the air force still requires the personal involvement of the Chinese political leadership.24 The question remains whether fourth – and fifth-generation Chinese political leaders, unlike their predecessors, will not hesitate to throw the air force into harmful situations.