Accomplishing and Supporting Objectives

Chinese air – and spacepower analysts demonstrate great faith in the util­ity of modern air and space offensive missions, and they maintain that PLAAF offensive missions can accomplish or support a wide array of strategic, cam­paign, operational, and also political objectives. To underscore the concept of the PLAAF as a “strategic” service, a number of analysts stress the ability of modern, informatized air and space forces to achieve the strategic objectives of the state either singlehandedly, or as the lead service in joint operations. Their contention is that in several recent limited wars and operations around the world, the speed, range, and destructiveness of offensive air and space have not only been militarily critical, but also politically decisive—constituting “the final word” that destroyed the adversary’s economic and logistical capability to sustain military operations, and that undermined the political will of an adver­sary’s population, armed forces, and government to fight onward.

Writing in 2006, analysts Cai Fengzhen and Deng Fan described the decisive importance of the air and space offensive mission this way:

The practise of modern warfare has already verified that “victory or defeat is determined in the air and space.” Air-space superiority not only can achieve maximum military advantage. It can also be used to obtain comprehensive benefits in political, spiritual and other areas. By means of operations in air-space battlefields. . . fighting speedy battles and win­ning quick decisions has already become the principal measure used by the United States and other major air – and space-countries for seizing comprehensive political and military benefits.26

The Science of Campaigns has identified three clusters of “basic tasks” that define the key strategic – and campaign-level objectives of PLAAF offen­sive campaigns. These focus on destroying or disabling enemy forces to achieve air dominance, supporting ground and maritime campaigns, and achieving other unspecified strategic goals of the state. More specifically, they include the following: “Destroy or cripple enemy aviation forces and ground air defense forces, and thereby seize air dominance”; “Destroy or weaken large enemy troop concentrations, and destroy enemy transportation systems, to create conditions for ground or maritime campaigns”; and “Strike enemy polit­ical, military, and economic targets, weaken the enemy’s combat potential to achieve specific strategic goals, and accomplish other specially assigned stra­tegic aims.”27

NDU analyst Yuan Jingwei’s description of the objectives of offensive missions, however, places more explicit emphasis on disabling the enemy’s combat systems than the list of tasks in The Science of Campaigns. He describes the objectives of these missions as follows:

to achieve air and space superiority [kongtianyoushi, Й^’ЙЙ’], paralyze the enemy’s combat systems [nanhuan di zuozhan tixi, ЯЙ±Й! ТШФ^], and weaken the enemy’s combat potential [xiaoruo di zhanzheng qianli, ШШШШ&%ІТ], in order to create the conditions for achieving strategic and campaign goals [wei dacheng zhanlue zhanyi mudi chuangzao tiao- jian, or to achieve these goals directly.28