Toward an Integrated Air and Space Force

Xu’s call for the air force to establish a concept of “air and space security” is directly related to its strategy of integrated air and space operations. Inte­grated air and space operations refer to the organic combining of airpower and spacepower to form an integrated air-space force. According to PLAAF ana­lysts, the air and space battlefield is the main domain for information collec­tion in which the space component plays an important role. Spy satellites, for example, can legally conduct reconnaissance over other countries. Navigation satellites can provide accurate positioning data. Communication satellites can provide global communications support.17 In addition, seizing air and space superiority prevents the enemy from gaining strategic air and space superior­ity.18 According to two prominent PLAAF researchers, “military activities in the air and space battlefield have already matured into the main military force of high technology local wars.”19

Research on integrated air and space operations began in 1990 when Dong Wenxian at PLAAF Headquarters proposed “the control of high-altitude three-dimensional territorial airspace”—a euphemism for operations in outer space.20 In 2000, a project championed by the President of the Air Force Engi­neering University, Major General Cai Fengzhen, was initiated with Senior Colonel Tian Anping as the project lead. This project was inspired by a book published by the PLA Navy (PLAN) entitled Looking Toward the Pacific (Й^ ¥>¥Ш). These researchers realized that while the navy was extending its look horizontally, the air force had to extend its look vertically, to outer space.

This project resulted in two monographs entitled The Air and Space Bat­tlefield and China’s Air Force (Й^К±^ФНЙ¥) published in 2004, and Inte­grated Air and Space Operations Studies (Й^—ФІТК^) published in 2006. At the same time, in 2003, Li Rongchang (Dean of the Telecommunications Engineering School at the Air Force Engineering University) published Inte­grated Air and Space Information Operations (Й^—ФІШ^ТТК), as one of the projects of the air force’s 10th Five-year Plan for military theory research. Since then, researchers at the Air Force Command College, including Wang Ming – liang (Deputy Department Head of Research), Ji Yan (Deputy Director of the Institute’s Strategic Research Office), and strategist Major General Qiao Liang, among others, have also researched integrated air and space operations.21

Integrated air and space operations are defined differently by various sources, but all involve the integration of battlespace, forces, and activities. A 2003 article defines integrated air and space operations as:22

air forces, structure, and operational activities integrating aviation and space, air defense and space defense. Integrated air and space warfare refers to aviation and space offensive and defensive equipment merged into one to conduct simultaneous offensive and defensive operations. It includes aircraft, cruise missiles, and to different degrees includes ballistic missiles, satellites, orbiting space stations, and space planes. At the same time it includes aviation interceptors, all types of ground-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles, and new concept weapons such as high power lasers, high power microwave weapons, and particle beam weapons.

The Air Force Informatized Work Office and the Air Force Informatized Expert Advisory Committee, in the book Air Force Informatized Knowledge: Concept Volume, define integrated aerospace operations as:

integrated aviation and space forces in the atmosphere and outer space as well as related terrestrial integrated operations. Its characteristic is “three integrations” under a unified command, namely the integration of oper­ational space, operational forces, and operational activities.

1. Integration of operational space. Although physical differences exist between the atmosphere and outer space, there is no defi­nite line that distinguishes them. The air and space battlefield is a seamless whole that is an integrated battlefield in which different platforms and methods can be used to carry out identical military activities.

2. Integration of Operational Forces. The organization, training, and command and control of aviation and space forces are basi­cally the same. It includes using aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, satellites, space stations, space planes, interceptors, bal­listic missiles, spacecraft, missiles, kinetic energy weapons, and lasers. Space forces are responsible for global reconnaissance, seiz­ing the information initiative, launching spacecraft, and achieving space supremacy.

3. Integration of operational activities. The integration of aviation and space operations as well as ground forces that directly support aviation and space forces.

The authors of Strategic Air Force offer a similar definition in which air and space integration refers to integration of aviation and space in terms of structure, and the management of air defense, missile defense, and space defense in order to build a “new concept air force” made up of air and space forces. The integration of air and space is based on the lack of a boundary between the atmosphere and space, which leads the authors to conclude that an air and space integrated force is inevitable from the standpoint of technol­ogy, operations, environment, and experience.23

According to Cai Fengzhen and Tian Anping, integrated air and space operations are “operations in which aviation and space forces are the main operational components. It includes other operational forces related to inte­grated air and space operations and is represented by joint operations in the air and space battlefield”24 In another venue, these authors define the air and space battlefield as an “integrated and information-oriented land (sea), air, and space battle arena, which fully connects organizationally fused and organically com­bined space and aerospace and related capabilities in the domains of the sur­face of the Earth, and the land (sea).”25 Cai and Tian also describe the air and space battlefield as the principal battlefield.26

These various definitions, if differing somewhat in scope and precision, nevertheless present important common and cohesive themes regarding the integration of the air and space battlespace and the integration of air and space forces and operational activities.