PLAAF Influence within the PLA

The growing capability of the PLAAF raises the question of its influence within the PLA and what role it currently plays in national policymaking. An analysis of the PLAAF’s missions versus those of other services is illuminating. In his “Essences for an Offensive and Defensive Chinese Air Force” essay, Lieu­tenant General Liu Yazhou argues that the air force must be capable of play­ing a major role in a variety of military operations against Taiwan—including air and missile attacks, a naval blockade, or even an outright invasion of the island.61 Over the last decade, the PLAAF has striven to develop the capability for carrying out all-weather, day-night, high-intensity, simultaneous offensive and defensive operations. The 2006 Science of Campaigns by the PLAs National Defense University identifies the following major PLAAF missions:62

■ military deterrence

■ offensive air operations (including air-blockade, airborne forces inser­tion, informatized operations, and special operations)

■ air defense

■ assisting ground and navy forces in offensive-defensive operations

■ assisting the Second Artillery force in missile attacks

■ resisting a more powerful enemy’s attack

■ participating in United Nations operations.

In discussing air offensive campaign categories, Science of Campaigns pinpointed three objectives that the PLAAF is expected to achieve:63

■ seizing air control by annihilating or crippling the enemy’s offensive and defensive airpower forces

■ creating favorable conditions for the army and navy to operate by destroying a large number of ground troops and the communication systems

■ attacking the enemy’s political, military, and economic targets to weaken his war potential or to achieve specific strategic objectives.

Two major concerns are intrinsic within PLA campaign theory: one is the presumption that the air force’s offensive capability remains limited, both in terms of the quantity and quality of PLAAF forces; and the other is that the enemy—specifically Taiwan—has built up such a sophisticated air defense sys­tem (consisting of radars, EW aircraft and satellites integrated with fighters, antiaircraft missiles, and artillery) that it will be difficult for PLAAF or PLAN strike aircraft to break through it.64

An important discontinuity of thought is inherent within how the PLAAF and the PLA perceive the PLAAF’s combat role and capabilities. While the PLAAF holds that the air force should be capable of being used through­out a conflict from the beginning to the end, PLA campaign theory argues otherwise, suggesting that the PLAAF should be employed in offensive oper­ations at the critical time (M^B^).65 This may reflect an intriguing fact: the officers responsible for writing PLA campaign theory come mainly from the army. Thus it is likely that this difference represents the army’s influence within PLA doctrinal circles and, consequently, its own interpretation about the mis­sion and current capability of the PLAAF. Furthermore, it explains why the PLA has attached great importance to land-based ballistic and cruise missile programs versus winged atmospheric (hence PLAAF) attack. Competition for resources between the PLAAF and Second Artillery is inevitable as the PLA pursues developing a long-range strike capability, particularly as strategic pro­jection remains a major deficit of PLAAF capability. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, according to PLA campaign doctrine, the Second Artillery is defined as a primary player of the joint strike force to conduct preemptive attacks (&ФФ1 Й) against enemy targets from long range.66

In contemplating regional conflict, China’s greatest concern is confront­ing an American intervention. Over the years after the first Gulf War, Chi­nese defense experts raised serious doubts whether the country could with­stand air and missile attacks similar to those that had shattered Iraq’s military structure and capabilities. The subsequent emphasis of the “three attacks and the three defenses” required the development of air defense systems that are capable of attacking stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and armed helicopters (the “three attacks”), and protecting against precision strikes, electronic jamming, and elec­tronic reconnaissance and surveillance (the “three defenses”).67 The 2008 defense white paper characterizes the PLAAF as a mixed force of aviation, ground-based air defense, airborne, signal, radar, electronic countermeasures (ECM), techni­cal reconnaissance, and chemical defense.68 This mixed-force structure will con­tinue to complicate China’s air and space decisions, particularly with regard to training, allocating roles and missions among the services and branches, and influencing resource allocations for Chinese air force modernization.

Division of responsibility across the services in air defense also challenges the PLAAF’s effort to build an integrated air defense system. The PLAAF is pri­marily responsible for the air defense mission. It not only operates most of Chi­na’s fighters and also most of its ground-based air defense systems, such as sur­face-to-air missiles (SAMs) and antiaircraft artillery (AAA). The PLA ground force and navy units also operate antiaircraft systems (short-range antiaircraft missiles and antiaircraft artillery, and navy fighters) to protect themselves. The question is to what extent the possession of air defense systems by other ser­vices represents an old service cultural preference for embracing every possible capability, particularly since many of these ground-based air defense weapon­ries have proven ineffective in recent warfare.69

The PLAAF’s Science of Modern Air Defense describes air defense as an integrated air-space operation in all dimensions (air, sea, space, cyber, and ground), and requires joint operations of all services.70 Yet against this con­fident assertion, evidence out of China is confusing. The PLAAF air defense forces operate the most sophisticated long – and middle-range SAM systems, the Russian made S-300 and China’s indigenously developed HQ-9/12 series. However, the bulk of Chinese SAM batteries remain equipped with the obso­lete HQ-2 systems as well as outdated Stalinist/Mao-era antiaircraft artil – lery.71 Perhaps what is even more significant is that no single national air com­mand system has ever been established equivalent to the former Soviet Union’s PVO-Strany, or the United States’ North American Aerospace Defense Com­mand (NORAD). Lieutenant General Liu has suggested creating a Chinese “NORAD” to command China’s air defense based around the Beijing Military Region Air Force. The recent Vanguard-2010 exercise suggests that the army air defense forces are attempting to assert their independent role in China’s national air defense system, however it develops.72

Conclusion

With the existence of a ground force-dominated culture and the emer­gence of other cultures for the other services, the PLAAF’s relationship with other services and organizations has been complicated, but not significantly changed since its earliest days. The PLAAF is a separate service (junzhong) along with the PLAN and Second Artillery under the CMC. The General Staff Department is responsible for operations, military affairs, training, and mobilization for the entire PLA. Allocation of missions is under the purview of the General Staff. As a result of bureaucratic politics, an analysis of mis­sions divided between the air force and other services does not suggest that the PLAAF’s role and influence are likely to change in the future, despite changes in China’s security interests, technological developments, and other areas.

The growth of China’s airpower in recent years has naturally raised great Western interest in comprehending the PLAAF’s influence within the PLA, its relationship with other services, and the role it currently plays in national policy­making. Change is clearly underway within the ranks of the PLAAF, which has embraced a new concept of operations that emphasizes development of an air force capable of both offensive and defensive operations, fielding an increasing number of fourth-generation multirole fighters, early warning and electronic warfare aircraft, and long-range surface-to-air missiles. The force structure is being radically reshaped to become a smaller, yet more technologically capa­ble, service. For military organizations to be able to take dramatic changes, they must also have appropriate personnel policies, organizational structure, service culture, and leader development programs. What has not changed is the PLAs political culture, service tradition, older ways of doing things, and outdated organizational system. All these form relentless constraints that will undoubt­edly continue to hinder the PLAAF’s modernization efforts.

In sum, then, the PLA is a titanic bureaucratic amalgamation with a leaden hand of tradition that can often block innovation. Changes in doctrine, training practices, force structure, and equipment are underway, yet many traditions and cultural characteristics of the 83-year-old PLA are rigorously maintained. On top of that, there is the Party-controlled political culture and the ground force-cen­tric predominant organizational tradition of the PLA. Both serve as constraining mechanisms that not only restrict the PLAs drive to autonomy, but also ensure its loyalty to the Party and obedience to Party policy. No military reformation can be expected to undermine the Party’s control over the military (with the CMC on the top, assisted by four headquarters departments, though not organized in Western fashion as true joint command and control apparatuses).

If new mission requirements and an emphasis on joint operations are forcing the PLAAF to rethink itself and its role, to reduce its force size, to acquire new aircraft and weapons systems, and to strengthen its command and control by informatization, none of these changes has seriously posed challenges to the existing organizational system of the PLA. The political culture and the military system of the PLA continue to ensure the Chinese air force remains as it has been—consisting of aviation, surface-to-air missiles, antiaircraft artil­lery, radar, and airborne troops, while space assets and strategic missiles remain separate from it. Despite the PLAAF’s vision of being capable of both offensive and defensive operations, the PLAs current campaign theory defines the Second Artillery force as a preemptive strike force and projects the PLAAF to carry out offensive operations at critical, necessary moments. Thus, although the PLAAF is in the midst of a dramatic transformation with new weapons systems and growing capabilities, its role and influence remain limited within the contempo­rary, army-dominated, Chinese military system. As in other nations previously, differing and conflicting service cultures contribute frictions between services, though, in China, that has not brought any fundamental change of relationship among the land-air-sea forces. The continued existence of political constraints on when and how airpower should be used further limits and frustrates any role the air force can play in national policymaking.

Historically, the Chinese leadership has repeatedly demonstrated hesita­tion in employing its national airpower for offensive purposes. This was partly attributed to the Chinese leadership’s misunderstanding of the PLAAF’s actual experience in the Korean War and in homeland air defense operations during the Cold War, and to their ignorance (for various reasons) of the actual role that airpower can play in modern conflict. The other factor was because the PLAAF had been incapable, in any case, of conducting offensive operations, again for a variety of reasons such as available force structure, capabilities, and training.

The potential of a U. S. intervention is always seen as a major variable of a regional security equation, particularly in a crisis over Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait. While the PLAAF’s modernization efforts may close the gap between its aircraft and avionic capabilities and those of the United States, its overall capa­bility will continue to be inferior to that of the U. S. Air Force. The current and future Chinese leadership will continue to face and confront the same dilem­mas as have its predecessors over the extent that political considerations and the PLAAF’s restricted capabilities work to constrain Beijing’s national security calculation and decisionmaking.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the PLA’s warfighting potential has grown in parallel with China’s economic surge. Assuming its economy contin­ues along a steady trajectory, China will be able to commit further resources to the more challenging aspects of the three-step strategy, particularly infor­matization. Should these goals be realized, the United States and other powers will face a genuine challenge in preparing themselves to encounter increasingly capable Chinese aerospace power over the coming decades. This perhaps is the key rationale fueling continued interest in studying the steady evolution of the PLAAF as it progresses through the 21st century.