Campaign-Specific Employment Concepts

Chinese military publications identify four types of air force campaigns: air offensive campaigns, air defense campaigns, air blockade campaigns, and airborne campaigns. These can be either air force-only campaigns or, more frequently, air force-led joint campaigns that incorporate other services. These air force campaigns can also be part of broader joint campaigns, such as an island-landing campaign or joint blockade campaign. In all air operations, a great deal of emphasis is placed on surprise, camouflage, use of deception, meticulous planning, and strikes against critical key points.

An air offensive campaign can have one or more of several objectives: obtaining air superiority; destroying key enemy political, military, and eco­nomic targets; destroying the enemy’s transportation and logistic supply sys­tem; and destroying the enemy’s forces to isolate the battlefield and facilitate PLA ground and maritime operations. Obtaining air superiority is needed in order to conduct air strikes against targets, but the principal objective of an air offensive campaign is to strike political, economic, and military targets, rather than simply to achieve air superiority.78

Several types of combat groups are involved in air offensive campaigns: a strike group, an air defense suppression group, a cover group, a support group, an air defense group, and an operational reserve.79 An offensive air campaign is said to consist of four tasks: conducting information operations, breaking through enemy defenses, launching air strikes, and protecting against coun­terstrikes. The first three are generally conducted sequentially, beginning with information operations. The last is conducted throughout the campaign.80

A textbook on military operations lists three primary objectives for air defense campaigns: protecting the capital against air attack, protecting other important targets within the theater, and seizing and holding air superiority.81 Defensive air campaigns, according to Chinese military publications, can be national in scope or can be confined to a particular theater.82 Depending on the circumstances, the entire air effort in a given war could be defensive; a single phase could be defensive; or, in the case of a geographically wide-ranging con­flict, some theaters could be defensive, while others are offensive. In a war over Taiwan, for example, the PLA might conduct an offensive air campaign in the area opposite Taiwan while preparing for defensive air campaigns to the north and south in anticipation of possible retaliation or counterattack by U. S. forces.

Air defense campaigns are described as entailing three types of oper­ations: resistance, counterattack, and close protection. Resistance operations are actions to intercept, disrupt, and destroy attacking aircraft. Counterattack operations are attacks on enemy air bases (including aircraft carriers). Close protection operations are passive defense measures, such as fortification, con­cealment, camouflage, and mobility.83 China’s overall approach to air defense is to combine the early interception of enemy attacks with full-depth, layered resistance to protect targets and forces while gradually increasing the tempo of counterattacks on enemy bases.84

Air blockade campaigns are operations intended to prevent an adver­sary from conducting air operations and to cut off its economic and military links with the outside world.85 Some Chinese sources describe them as simply a special variety of air offensive campaign,86 but most authoritative sources regard them as a distinct type of campaign.87 They will usually be conducted as part of a broader joint blockade campaign but can be implemented as an independent air force campaign. Air blockade campaigns are regarded as hav­ing a strong political nature, being long in duration, and requiring a high level of command and control.88 Typically, an air blockade campaign will entail the establishment of one or more no-fly zones surrounded by aerial surveillance zones.89 Actions conducted as part of an air blockade campaign will include information operations, flight suppression operations, interdiction of mari­time and ground traffic, strikes against the enemy’s counterblockade system, and air defense operations.90

Unlike the U. S. armed forces, the PLAs airborne assault (paratroop) forces belong to its air force. Therefore, an airborne campaign in the PLA is an air force campaign, not a joint campaign. Airborne campaigns are regarded as inherently resource-intensive and difficult to organize and prosecute.91 For an airborne campaign to be carried out, information and air superiority must be seized (at least locally) and firepower preparation around the landing zone must be conducted. Then, air corridors to the landing zone must be opened up and kept clear, and enemy land-based air defenses near the landing zone must be suppressed while airborne forces are flown to the landing zone. Once they have landed, the airborne forces must clear and secure a base for receiv­ing additional forces and supplies, including, if they landed on or near an air­field, seizing the airfield and bringing it to operational readiness. Meanwhile, friendly air and missile forces will suppress and interdict nearby enemy ground forces. Finally, the air-landed forces can initiate ground operations.92

Although any of these four types of air force campaigns can be con­ducted as an independent single-service campaign, they are more likely to be conducted as part of a broader joint campaign, such as an island-landing cam­paign or a joint blockade campaign. Even if an air force campaign is conducted as an independent, single-service campaign, other services, particularly the PLAN and the Second Artillery, are likely to be involved in supporting roles. For example, conventional missiles of the Second Artillery will play a key role in air offensive campaigns, counterattack operations of air defense campaigns, and providing firepower support for airborne campaigns.

Similarly, the PLAN has responsibility for defending certain sectors of China’s airspace and would be the service with primary responsibility for conducting counterattacks against air attacks launched from aircraft carriers and, thus, would likely play an important role in an air defense campaign. The PLAN is also responsible for providing air defense for surface naval forces, including, presumably, a Taiwan-bound invasion force. Little information appears to be available in published Chinese sources, however, on how PLAAF and PLAN aviation and SAM forces would interoperate when conducting air operations—a potentially significant challenge, particularly given the huge engagement envelopes (150 kilometers or more) of the land-based and ship – based SAMs the PLAAF and PLAN have begun acquiring. Conversely, naval strike appears not to be an important mission for the PLAAF, meaning that naval strike operations are primarily the responsibility of the relatively small and less-capable PLAN aviation forces (along with, possibly in the future, the Second Artillery, if it acquires an antiship ballistic-missile capability).

Conclusion

Chinese military publications on air force operations are system­atic and comprehensive. Few militaries in the world have such extensive published documentation on the employment of air forces. The concepts described, moreover, appear to be realistic and practical, drawing on the expe­rience of other air forces in recent conflicts, particularly those of the United States (the PLAAF having had no significant combat experience since the 1950s), but remaining appropriate to the current and near-future capabilities of the PLAAF. Chinese military analysts are clearly engaged in a serious process of developing specific, practical concepts for the employment of China’s air forces.

In addition, although the PLAAF has traditionally emphasized defensive operations, that is no longer the case, and the United States and Taiwan would likely find the PLAAF to be an aggressive opponent in the event of a conflict. The PLA clearly prefers to achieve air superiority by attacking its enemy on the ground or water. Especially at the beginning of a war, the PLA will endeavor to attack enemy air bases, ballistic-missile bases, aircraft carriers, and warships equipped with land-attack cruise missiles before enemy aircraft can take off or missile attacks can be launched. These attacks, moreover, will be carried out not by China’s air force operating in isolation but in coordination with the Sec­ond Artillery’s conventional ballistic and cruise missiles.

By 2015 or so, the weapons systems and platforms that China is acquir­ing will potentially enable it to effectively implement the four types of air force campaigns described in the previous section. The significant numbers of mod­ern fighter aircraft and SAMs, as well as the long-range early warning radars and secure data and voice communication links China is likely to have by 2015, for example, coupled with the hardening and camouflage measures China has already taken, would make a Chinese air defense campaign, if conducted according to the principles described in Chinese military publications, highly challenging for U. S. air forces.93 Similarly, these same modern fighters, along with ground-launched conventional ballistic and cruise missiles, cruise mis­sile-carrying medium bombers, and aerial refueling aircraft, will enable China to conduct offensive operations far into the western Pacific.94

Whether China will actually be able to fully exploit its air force doctrine and capabilities, however, is less clear. Much will depend on the quality of the training and leadership of China’s air force, and it should be pointed out that the PLAAF last engaged in major combat operations in the Jinmen campaign of 1958, more than 50 years ago.