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China ‘not ready to win wars’ despite PLA modernisation

Sideswipe

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
The best equipped army in the world and the biggest army in the world is useless without good military leadership. A good military leader can defeat a much larger army with a smaller army. Its debatable whether the PLA has such a leadership and for sure the SAF does not.


victory or defeat in warfare depend upon a combination of factors. for example. intelligence is very crucial. a great general who was given faulty intelligence would not avoid the fate of defeat. the PLA's military intelligence system is historically highly competent.
 

Papsmearer

Alfrescian (InfP) - Comp
Generous Asset
victory or defeat in warfare depend upon a combination of factors. for example. intelligence is very crucial. a great general who was given faulty intelligence would not avoid the fate of defeat. the PLA's military intelligence system is historically highly competent.

A great general takes steps to ensure that his intelligence is reliable and valid. A bad General accepts the intelligence he is given without questioning it. Even with faulty intelligence, a great general can over come it and win. Best example of this is the 1973 Yom Kippur war. IDF intelligence was so bad that most of the soldiers were on leave, and never expected the Arabs to attack. They nevertheless overcame the faulty intelligence and won, with some great generalship exibited by Ariel Sharon and others.
 

sleaguepunter

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
victory or defeat in warfare depend upon a combination of factors. for example. intelligence is very crucial. a great general who was given faulty intelligence would not avoid the fate of defeat. the PLA's military intelligence system is historically highly competent.

That a rare praise of PLA from u.

Warfare is never determine by numbers, technologies or intelligence alone. PLA command and control are too rigid and low tech. Local commanders are not even have the freedom to use their own initiative to make tactical changes to the OPs order. PLA need to change its old fashion thinking, troops need not to be in their millions but need to be well trained and well led. PLA instead of boasting can sink USN carrier should instead building up a real blue water fleet. There no way PLA navy to challenge the USN within 10 years as USN had a head start of a CVBG since the 1940s.
 

AfterTheWar

Alfrescian
Loyal

China's military hindered by pampered recruits from one-child families

Date February 19, 2015 - 2:58PM
Jane Perlez

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People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers may look hardened but a report shows many are too soft. Photo: Reuters

Beijing: Many armies have trouble moulding capable soldiers from fresh-out-of-school 18-year-olds. But China, which is no exception, has a particular problem: pampered recruits.

Senior officers in the People's Liberation Army recognise that many of its volunteers and conscripts, as a result of China's one-child policy, have been spoiled by doting parents and need toughening up, according to a lengthy report by RAND Corporation on the modernisation of the army.

"After 30 years of the one-child policy, kids come into the army who are used to being coddled and the apple of their parents' eyes", said Scott Harold, deputy director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Policy at RAND, a research organisation, and one of seven authors of the report released last week.

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An officer of the PLA uses a string to ensure that the soldiers in a guard of honour, stand in a straight line before an official welcoming. Photo: Reuters

Newspapers published by the PLA have carried reports about half of the young men in a unit breaking down in tears and many wanting to drop out, Dr Harold said. Some were reported to have broken the rules by sending texts to their girlfriends. "While this is a weakness, it is not clear how much of a weakness," Mr Harold added.

About 70 per cent of the army's soldiers come from one-child families, including about 80 per cent of its combat troops, said Major General Liu Mingfu, a professor at the National Defence University in Beijing.

Even President Xi Jinping, who as chairman of the Central Military Commission is the head of the PLA, has alluded to a lack of sufficiently hardened soldiers.

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Chinese People's Liberation Army navy sailors. Photo: Reuters

"We must not make our soldiers soft during the peace era", he said last month, according to a report in PLA Daily, published by the Chinese army. "The mighty troops have to be mighty. Soldiers must have guts and courage".

The RAND report, titled China's Incomplete Military Transformation, is unusual because it focuses on the army's weaknesses.

The idea for the report came from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a body created by Congress in 2000 to study the strategic relationship between the US and China. The task was to look at the PLA's shortcomings to better understand what Chinese commanders needed to improve.

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Members of China's PLA including the navy, centre, and air force, right, await the start of a welcoming ceremony in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

China's army has not fought a war since 1979, when it performed miserably against its neighbour Vietnam in a short, extremely bloody battle. Combat weaknesses persist, the report said, including insufficient strategic airlift abilities, a limited number of special mission aircraft and deficiencies in anti-submarine warfare.

"Knowing the weaknesses - and particularly what PLA officers themselves see as the most important shortcomings - is critical to understanding what areas the PLA will emphasise as it continues to modernise," said Michael Chase, a senior political scientist at RAND and one of the report's authors. "We are not trying to say the PLA is unprofessional, nor are we trying to say there is nothing for people in the US and other countries to worry about."

The weaknesses in personnel and training catalogued by RAND are not usually talked about in public. The report found quite a bit of candour buried in the newspapers published by the commands of China's seven military regions.

"The overall level of talented personnel in our army does not meet the requirement for fulfilling its historic mission in the new century", lamented one article cited in the report.

The report makes it clear that the PLA has had trouble attracting first-rate recruits not only because of easier lifestyles but also because of higher salaries in the civilian economy. Starting pay for a recruit might be well below 1000 yuan a month, or about $204, even as low perhaps as 600 yuan, said Dennis Blasko, a former military attache at the US Embassy in Beijing and the author of the The Chinese Army Today.

In December, as part of his anticorruption drive, Mr Xi said soldiers would have to learn to live on their salaries - a painful requirement if military pay is not raised.

New York Times


 

Papsmearer

Alfrescian (InfP) - Comp
Generous Asset
Same could be said of the SAF. Except that in addition to weak conscripts, we also have useless generals.
 
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