A number of recent PLA analyses are placing growing emphasis on finding ways for the PLAAF to use defensive operations to retake the initiative by carrying out effective counterattacks against enemy bases. Counterattacks are seen as an increasingly critical aspect of the PLAs overall “active defense” strategy and “being prepared for simultaneous offensive and defensive opera – tions.”53 Military analysts make clear that in addition to accomplishing a variety of important protective and damage limitation tasks, China’s air and space defensive operations are expected to try to transform the nature of the war by lifting the air force out of a “passive” or “defensive” posture into an “active” or “offensive” posture. This transformation will require air and space defensive forces to prevent or limit fundamental damage to military command and control systems and preserve the PLAs capacity to make war. Interception and counterattack operations would likewise be expected to inflict sufficiently high attrition rates to weaken, paralyze, or confuse enemy air and space operations, and make a major contribution to China seizing air and space superiority (zhikongquan, zhitianquan, $[l:SfX,$[RfX).
Although officially called “counterattacks” (fanji, йф), Chinese analysts stress that these strikes can (and should) include attacks against enemy air – and ground-based assets and facilities, and possibly even before an adversary’s first strike. One analyst, writing frankly about air and space counterattacks, notes that these operations are sufficiently similar to offensive strike operations (kongtian jingong zuozhan, Й^ЖЙІТіК) that his study analyzes counterattack operations as part of its section on offensive operations.54 Air – and space-defense specialists Wang Fengshan, Li Xiaojun, and Ma Shuanzhu likewise define “active counterattacks” (jiji fanji, Ш®йф) in a way that seems as though it could include first strikes to destroy or delay an enemy’s plan to carry out air attacks:
Active counterattack refers to, in the course of air defense operations, creating and seizing advantageous opportunities to actively and assertively launch air strikes [kongxi, ЙШ] and disruption operations [xirao xingdong, ШМГЙ] against the enemy, to destroy his plans for air strikes, delay his air strike operations, weaken and halt his power to commit air strikes, and use attacks to help our defense and support our regular [zhengmian, ШЩ] resistance operations. The keypoint objective of our counterattack operations is the enemy’s information centers for his air strike systems, his communication nodes, and other crucial command and control facilities.55
Chinese analysts have tried to set out several basic principles for carrying out these counterattacks, including recommending a relatively low number of small-scale, tightly focused attacks aimed at enemy gaps and weaknesses in order to cause maximum disruption. As suggested above, they also emphasize that it is better to strike early rather than to delay. Counterattacking forces are urged, as much as possible, to focus their strikes on paralyzing one aspect of the enemy’s operations at a time, rather than attempting a more wide-ranging attack. The keypoint targets for operations are crucial enemy command and control facilities, information centers for air strike systems, communication nodes, bases (including carriers), air and space assets, and support facilities.56 The NDU’s Yuan Jingwei stresses in particular the importance of precision attacks against both the physical and informational “sourceheads” (yuantou, ША) of incoming enemy planes and missiles—air bases, space launch bases, command and control centers, and orbiting spacecraft.57 With success in these “active defense” counterattacks, PLAAF analysts have voiced great hope that these operations can reverse the overall trend in a war or campaign from defensive to offensive, and “thoroughly remove [us from] the passive position of air defense, and allow us to obtain the initiative in a campaign”58
Conclusion
In their analyses of China’s emerging air force missions over the past decade or so, Chinese air and space analysts have devoted increasing attention to promoting China’s preparation for offensive missions and its efforts to seize and maintain the initiative in combat. In their discussion of deterrence operations, this has included efforts to develop a ladder of signals of increasing intensity to ward off potential adversaries. In their analysis of offensive operations, these analysts have stressed the increased importance of offense in PLAAF missions. They have also emphasized the importance of targeting what they see as the fragile “systems of systems” that constitute enemy combat information systems. Finally, even within the defensive mission, analysts have placed a growing emphasis on counterattacks as a means of seizing and holding the initiative in the face of near certain large-scale air attacks.
The Development of the PLAAF’s Doctrine
Roger Cliff
As history has repeatedly demonstrated, doctrine is key to the effective employment of air forces. No matter how capable an air force’s equipment and operators are, if they lack an appropriate doctrine, their employment will be ineffective at best and self-destructive at worst. A thorough understanding of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), therefore, requires the fullest possible understanding of how its doctrine has evolved since its creation over six decades ago.1
Evolution of PLAAF Doctrine
Like the U. S. Air Force (USAF) and, indeed, the majority of the world’s air forces, the PLAAF was first founded as part of China’s army, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Unlike the USAF, however, which became an independent service in 1947 and went on to develop its own doctrine and employment concepts, for over half a century PLAAF doctrine has struggled to move out of the PLA army’s shadow, even though the PLAAF became an independent service in 1949.2 Tied to the land-centric force-employment concepts of the PLA, PLAAF doctrine mostly evolved in step with that of the PLA army. In the initial years after the establishment of the PLAAF, “no consideration was ever given to making the air force a service independent of the army. . . because the PLA leadership did not want an autonomous aviation force.”3 Accordingly, the PLAAF’s first commander and political commissar were chosen directly from the army.4 The shadow cast by the PLA army over the PLAAF is evident in the early roles and missions of the Chinese air force. For example, the PLAAF’s first operational mission in 1949—defending Beijing and Shanghai against Nationalist air raids—was defensive in nature.5 In the early 1950s, one of the PLAAF’s primary missions was seizing air superiority over the battlefield.6 Both of these missions are reflective of a ground force perspective on the utility of air forces.
The Korean War, battles over Taiwan’s offshore islands, and the Vietnam conflict shaped both the evolution of PLAAF doctrine and the pace of the PLAAF’s growth from the 1950s to the 1980s. During the Korean War, the PLAAF’s original air plan was to support ground troops as its primary mission, again a reflection of the PLA army’s influence on China’s air force employment concepts.7 The PLAAF lacked the technical capability to execute this strategy, however, and had to change its mission to that of conducting air operations against U. S. forces. This caused the PLAAF to develop a basic air defense strategy and tactics.8
Air operations against Nationalist forces on Taiwan’s outlying islands of Yijiangshan and Jinmen (the latter also known as Quemoy or Kinmen) in the late 1950s also helped to shape PLAAF doctrine. The Yijiangshan Island campaign of 1954-1955 is the only campaign in PLA history to have combined air, ground, and naval operations.9 The PLAAF’s goals were to achieve air superiority, attack Taiwanese resupply ships, conduct decoy and reconnaissance missions, and provide direct air support for landing operations.10 Lessons learned from the Yijiangshan Island campaign resonate in subsequent PLAAF strategy and employment concepts and include a “relentless use of an overwhelming striking force to attack enemy artillery and firepower positions as well as command and communication centers.”11 Chinese military leaders also learned that they could overcome the short ranges and limited loiter times of their fighter jets by using the numerical superiority of PLAAF fighters to maintain continuous fighter patrols.12 A third lesson was that, while attack sorties should be flown according to plan, commanders should allow flexibility “in target selection based on the need of ground forces.”13 The Yijiangshan experience became a model for the PLAs concept of the role airpower would play in future small-scale conflicts.14 This was summarized as “air defense first, followed by air superiority, and then offensive air support.”15
The Jinmen campaign of 1958, the most recent Chinese military conflict to truly involve air combat, was also an important shaper of PLAAF strategy and doctrine. The conflict also provides an example of how air operational principles were governed by directives issued from the very top of the PLA— the Central Military Commission (CMC).16 According to Zhang Xiaoming, the operational guidance of the CMC stressed using massed force to achieve protection of forces and destruction of enemy forces; subservience of military battles to political battles by a strict adherence to CMC operational policy; and study and application of PLAAF experiences and tactics drawn from the Korean War.17
Because the Chinese leadership was uncertain about the PLAAF’s counterstrike capabilities vis-a-vis Taiwan, the PLAAF was employed defensively. Thus, it “deployed large numbers of fighters to the region but could not capitalize on its numerical superiority,” since it had to reserve half of its aircraft to protect home bases.18 Along with the political concern of not wanting to escalate the Jinmen campaign into an international crisis, the limited range of Chinese MiG-17 aircraft also inhibited the offensive role that the PLAAF could play.19
In addition to battle experience, China’s political upheavals have also shaped the evolution of Chinese air force doctrine. Beginning with the Sino – Soviet split in the 1960s and during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution period, Chinese airpower, and the ability to execute its strategy and doctrine, atrophied. The Sino-Soviet split significantly slowed the PLAAF’s modernization efforts, as China was highly dependent on Soviet technology transfers for equipping the PLAAF.20 And, due to the fact that air forces are, by their very nature, more technically oriented services than armies, the PLAAF suffered disproportionately from the Cultural Revolution, which discounted anything having to do with knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, the PLAAF’s association with Defense Minister Lin Biao’s failed coup attempt against Mao in 1971 resulted in the air force being marginalized until after Mao’s death and the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping in 1978.21 Partly as a consequence, PLAAF involvement during China’s war with Vietnam in 1979 was limited. As in the case of the Jinmen conflict, China’s air involvement during the conflict was also constrained both by political factors—not wanting to involve the United States in the former case and the Soviet Union in the latter—and by the limited capabilities of the PLAAF.
When Deng Xiaoping took control of the CMC and later became China’s undisputed leader in 1978, he ushered in a new era of economic and military reform, which set all military services on a path to modernization and reform, and his perspective on airpower was elevated to official CMC dogma.22 This perspective viewed the pursuit of air superiority as crucial to Chinese military power and winning future wars.23
The actual implementation of Deng’s directives on Chinese airpower modernization, however, was constrained during most of his tenure as China’s paramount leader, for two major reasons. First, by attaching special political weight to the PLAAF, Deng not only wanted to alleviate the decrepit state of Chinese airpower, he also wanted to keep tight control over the PLAAF so as to prevent it from becoming the politically dangerous service it had been under Lin Biao during the Cultural Revolution.24 Second, the army-centrism ingrained during the Mao era attenuated efforts to implement near-term improvements in the PLAAF.25 For example, when the PLA began reorganizing ground forces into group armies in the early 1980s, the PLAAF was given guidance that its role was to support the needs of ground forces and that a victory was a ground force victory.26
The Gulf War of 1991 spurred renewed debate within the PLAAF and Chinese military establishment about how to modernize and develop Chinese airpower. The U. S. show of force in the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996, in which the United States deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups near Taiwan in response to Chinese military intimidation of Taiwan, further motivated doctrinal reform and technological modernization efforts in the PLAAF. The PLAAF’s hopes for a strategy of “quick reaction,” “integrated coordination,” and “combat in depth” had to be transformed from wishful desires to operational realities.27 “Quick reaction” meant launching an instantaneous retaliatory strike for deterrence, or even survival.28 “Integrated coordination” meant allowing the air force to “manage the long-range bomber air groups and oversee the initial stages of joint operations with the other services and between air combat units stationed in different military regions.”29 Finally, “combat in depth” meant conducting operations over a wide geographical area.30 However, operationalizing these concepts was difficult because, for most of the 1990s, military reform tended to stress internal organization and structural changes, as opposed to training and equipment modernization.31 The PLAAF lacked the equipment and training needed to implement this strategy.32
In the early 1990s, PLAAF employment concepts assumed that future wars would be conducted according to an active defense strategy with three phases: “strategic defense, strategic stalemate, and strategic counterattack.”33 Under the umbrella of active defense, PLAAF campaigns were divided into two categories—defensive campaigns and attack campaigns—either of which could be one of two types: independent air force campaigns or air force campaigns as part of a joint campaign.34 PLAAF publications also specified three levels of scale for an air defense campaign, with small campaigns requiring air defense of a strategic position, large campaigns requiring air defense of a battle area, and larger campaigns requiring air defense of many battle areas.35
A PLAAF study published in 1990 revealed both the desire to have a more unified air strategy, and the gap between desired strategy and the ability to implement it. For example, one challenge to execution of the aforementioned rapid-reaction strategy was the lack of a unified air defense plan in China.36 Each service possessed its own air defense forces, and coordinating the different elements within each service was challenging enough; it was virtually impossible to coordinate operations across services.37
Other dimensions of the PLAAF strategy included two principles: the “light front, heavy rear” [Шій’Ш] and “deploying in three rings” concepts.38 The light front, heavy rear principle stemmed from the PLAAF’s responsibility to protect airfields, “national political and economic centers, heavy troop concentrations, important military facilities, and transportation systems.”39 Under light front, heavy rear, the PLAAF “would organize its SAM [surface – to-air missile] and AAA [antiaircraft artillery] forces into a combined high, medium, and low altitude and a far, medium, and short distance air defense net.”40 Intercept lines and aviation forces would also be organized into a series of interception layers.41 However, in executing this concept, the PLAAF faced two daunting challenges: the limited range of Chinese aircraft, and adversaries that had aircraft capable of conducting deep strikes into Chinese territory.42 The limited range of PLAAF aircraft was worsened by the fact that most airfields and almost all SAMs were concentrated near China’s large cities, far away from China’s borders.43 For the light front, heavy rear principle to work, moreover, the PLAAF needed to develop a better command-and-con – trol system; otherwise, there was a risk of fratricide to friendly aircraft from SAMs and AAA.44
To be used in conjunction with the light front, heavy rear principle, “deploying in three rings” involved organizing a small quantity of interceptors, AAA, and SAMs “as a combined air defense force into ‘three dimensional, indepth, overlapping’ firepower rings.”45 Furthermore, according to Kenneth W. Allen, Glenn Krumel, and Jonathan D. Pollack,46
Each weapon system would be assigned a specific airspace to defend— high, medium or low. In-depth rings means assigning each weapon system a specific distance from the target to defend—distant, medium or close. Overlapping rings means organizing each weapon system into left, middle or right firepower rings facing the most likely avenue of approach.
The American experience with airpower in the first Gulf War transformed military thought on the use of air forces and what they could contribute to modern war, and China was no exception to this pattern of influence. In 1993, after Operation Desert Storm, 60 airpower specialists formed an air – power theory, strategy, and development study group to investigate independent air campaigns.47 By 1997, the Chinese air force had “claimed precedence over the other service branches, and the People’s War as a unifying dogma had given way to service-specific strategies.”48
According to another study, as of the late 1990s, the primary PLAAF missions were air coercion, air offensives, air blockades, and support for ground force operations.49 Coercion could come in the form of demonstrations, such as deployments and exercises, weapon tests, or overflights. It could also come in the form of limited strikes to warn or punish an adversary. Air offensives, by contrast, would entail large-scale strikes with the goal of rapidly gaining air superiority, reducing an adversary’s capacity for military operations, and establishing the conditions necessary for victory. An air blockade would entail attacks on airfields and seaports as well as on air, land, and sea transportation routes with the goal of cutting off an enemy from contact with the outside world. Support for ground force operations would include attacks on logistics facilities, hardened coastal defenses (in the case of an amphibious operation), reinforcements, and key choke points, such as bridges. It would also include battlefield close air support, strategic and theater airlift, airborne operations against an enemy’s command headquarters, and the deployment of ground – based air defenses to protect ground forces and key facilities.50
As Mark A. Stokes noted, as of the late 1990s, PLAAF operational principles included “surprise and first strikes,” “concentration of best assets,” “offensive action as a component of air defense,” and “close coordination.”51 “Surprise and first strikes” refers to the goal of crippling an opponent and gaining the initiative early in a conflict through surprise and large-scale attacks on key targets, such as the enemy’s air command-and-control structure, key air bases, and SAM sites. Concentration of best assets supports this principle and refers to using the PLAAF’s best assets in the initial strikes and to dedicating the majority of them to targets that will have the most influence on a campaign. Offensive action as a component of air defense refers to using offensive counterair attacks as an integral aspect of air defense by attacking those enemy assets that pose the greatest threat. Close coordination refers to coordinating the air assets of all services (army, People’s Liberation Army Navy [PLAN], PLAAF, Second Artillery), as well as unified command at the theater level. As seen later in this chapter, these principles remain key elements of PLAAF employment concepts.52
A major change in PLAAF doctrine occurred in 1999, when it was issued campaign guidance (Ш&ШШ) that “provides the classified doctrinal basis and general guidance for how the PLAAF will fight future campaigns.”53 Since the guidance is classified, its exact contents are unknown. What Western analysts do know is that the guidance shows that the PLAAF had deepened its understanding of the operational level of war. The PLAAF also now identified three types of air force campaigns: air offensive, air defense, and air blockade.54
Until 2004, the PLAAF lacked its own service-specific strategy, and the actual ability of the PLAAF to integrate its campaign and operational principles with the Second Artillery, PLA army, and PLAN was questionable. One study states that, until that time, the Chinese air force relied “almost solely on the PLA army’s Active Defense’ operational component as its strategic-level doctrinal guidance.”55 The approval of the PLAAF’s active defense strategy as a component of the National Military Strategic Guidelines for air operations in 2004, however, indicated an important shift in the PLAAF’s status.56 The PLAAF’s strategic component of the National Military Strategic Guidelines is now identified as “Air and Space Integrated, Simultaneous Preparations for the Offensive and Defensive” ([Й^—фі^ЖШ^).”57 While it does not appear that the PLAAF yet has a service-specific strategy that is as well defined as the PLAN’s strategy of offshore defense, it does seem that the PLAAF is now seen as a truly independent service. Lanzit and Allen (2007) cite Hong Kong press reports that the PLAAF should be a strategic air force that stands “side by side” with the Chinese army and navy “to achieve command of the air, ground, and sea.”58
