Posted on 11/25/2014 1:31:53 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In 1991, Chinese military officers watched as the United States dismantled the Iraqi Army, a force with more battle experience and somewhat greater technical sophistication than the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Americans won with casualties that were trivial by historical standards.
This led to some soul searching. The PLA hadn’t quite been on autopilot in the 1980s, but the pace of reform in the military sector had not matched that of social and economic life in China. Given the grim performance of the PLA in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union, something was bound to change. The Gulf War provided a catalyst and direction for that change.
Learning
To get a sense of why the Gulf War matters for the PLA, we need to take a quick detour into organizational theory. Armies learn in several different ways; experiments, experience, grafting (taking members from other, similar orgs), vicarious learning and scanning. In 1991, the PLA lacked any relevant experience in modern warfare since the disastrous campaign against Vietnam in 1979. It lacked the funds and the political wherewithal to undertake the kind of large-scale exercises necessary for modern war. Grafting is notoriously difficult for modern military organizations, as it’s become awkward to simply hire sergeants and colonels from foreign countries.
This leaves scanning and vicarious learning, both of which involve trying to learn as much as possible from the environment (scanning), and from the experiences of other armies. In 1991, the Gulf War made apparent both what worked (the United States military) and what didn’t work (the Iraqi military). It’s not surprising, in this context, that the Gulf War would have such a big effect on the PLA.
Equipment
One big problem came on the equipment side.
By 1990, the technical sophistication of the PLA had deteriorated to the degree that Iraqi forces enjoyed a considerable advantage over their Chinese counterparts. The Iraqi Air Force included MiG-23s, MiG-25s and MiG-29s, while the PLAAF relied on Chinese-produced copycats of the MiG-21, as well as older aircraft such as the MiG-19. Similarly, the Iraqi air defense system, which had failed to incur major damage on waves of attacking American aircraft, was at least as sophisticated as the systems China was capable of employing.
The Chinese had also discovered, through access to Iraqi tanks captured by the Iranians in the Persian Gulf War, that the Iraqi T-72s that presented no challenge whatsoever to the U.S. Army were considerably superior to extant Chinese tanks. Although the Gulf War didn’t involve serious naval combat, it wasn’t hard to infer that the problems likely afflicted the naval sector, as well.
The balance between quality and quantity has shifted back and forth historically. In the Chinese Civil War and in Korea, the PLA took advantage of numbers and tactical effectiveness to defeat (or at least level the ground with) more technologically sophisticated opponents. In Vietnam, injections of critical anti-access technology had helped blunt U.S. air offensives. Historically, the PLA had hoped that numerical advantage would help even the playing field against one of the superpowers, but the U.S.-led coalition cut through quantitatively superior Iraqi forces like a hot knife through butter. Iraq demonstrated that, at least as far as conventional warfighting was concerned, the balance had shifted heavily in favor of technology.
This understanding of the Gulf War helped drive PLA modernization. Especially in air and naval forces, China took immediate steps to update its military technology, generally through purchasing the most-advanced Soviet hardware. Strapped for cash, Russia was eager to make deals, and didn’t worry overmuch about the long-range consequences of technology transfer. China also attempted to acquire technology with military applications from Europe, but sanctions associated with the Tiananmen Square massacre hamstrung this effort. Finally, China accelerated efforts to increase the sophistication of research and development in its own military-industrial base.
Along with the changes in technology came changes in doctrine and in expectations for how war would play out. The PLA began to emphasize airpower more than ground power, and in particular, investigated the potential for long-range precision strike. Historically, the PLA has never had the opportunity to carry out significant, operationally relevant strikes behind enemy lines, cooperation with guerrilla formation in the Civil War notwithstanding. Indeed, the PLA even lacks experience with traditional, “deep battle” maneuver warfare, in which the exploitation of breakthroughs gives armored spearheads the ability to disrupt enemy logistics and command.
While the Gulf War did not demonstrate that deep strike could decisively win modern wars, it undoubtedly did show that long-range precision strike could help disrupt enemy operations, and even seriously attrite fielded enemy forces. The PLA immediately began to develop its capability in this area. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) grew in importance relative to the ground forces of the PLA (although, this has as much to do with the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the decline in importance of North Korea as it does with a new understanding of technology), and both began to concentrate on platforms that offered long-range strike opportunities. The two services also began to shift towards smaller numbers of higher-technology systems.
For its part, the Second Artillery shifted its focus from nuclear deterrence to long-range precision strike, with both ballistic and cruise missiles. Developing a modern appreciation of military-systems integration, the PLAN, PLAAF and Second Artillery have also emphasized joint operations, with a focus on developing command, control and communications procedures that allow the efficient, coordinated use of military force. However, it’s hard to evaluate the success of such planning in the absence of wartime experience.
Conclusion
Did the Chinese overstate the implications of the Gulf War? Yes and no. Revised scholarship on the Gulf War has made clear that whatever the impact of “shock and awe,” the coalition’s conventional military superiority carried the day. American and British forces had significant technical advantages, but they also had much better training than the Iraqis, the experience of the Iran-Iraq War notwithstanding. The air war set the stage for coalition victory, but the coalition still needed to excel at conventional maneuver warfare in order to succeed.
Still, the Gulf War provided Chinese military and civilian decision makers with a ready example of what modern war looked like, and gave some lessons about how to fight (and how not to fight) in the future. The PLA has become a radically more sophisticated organization—with much more effective learning capacity—than it was in 1991. We have yet to see, however, how all the pieces will fall together in real combat.
“Do you think China has empire plans in the future?”
Without a doubt.
And The Zero is helping them. . .
5.56mm
Digging in didn’t work as I spointed out. He felt the same sort of war he had with Iran, i.e., head-to-head fight, was what we would do. . .he was an idiot.
Boo Yah ! They better be skeered !!
Come at them like a spider monkey I will :)
Yeah, Saddam was screwed. In addition to sheer tactical and qualitative superiority of US weaponry, training, and logistics was the intelligence gathering. The total penetration of Saddam’s C^3 and security infrastructure allowed the US to know everything he was up to. This was then was followed by a psyops campaign that convinced him the invasion would come from the sea in a marine beach landing. He was totally pantsed by Schartzkopf’s end-run from the west.
It was the most lopsided battle since Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa into Poland. Events were hitting Saddam so fast inside of his OODA loop that he didn’t know which way was up.
Yes, but the statement as made was NOT inaccurate. Just immaterial.
You think that we have lost generations of good people in combat in the last 40 years?
Isn’t the real total for 40 years of combat about 11,000? Under Reagan, we averaged 2200 GIs dying a year while in service.
Bump
They learned much and adjusted.
All five of them. Right?
And each of them probably would have had 2 or three kids.
But that’s ok. As long as the 2,200 aren’t your kids.
But oil is cheap. And the Middle East is tranquil. So it’s all good.
Well my son didn’t die when he was in the Army during that 40 year span, nor did my brothers or me during that time.
Twenty two hundred of us were dying a year under Reagan, without combat, while all of the combat losses since 1974 total about 11,000.
You are a good peacenik, too bad you missed the 60s.
Just think, the world would have been so perfect if America weren’t so mean to the Soviet Union and the commies and Muslims.
But that’s ok. As long as the 2,200 aren’t your kids.
...
Our highway system claims many more lives.
I did not miss the sixties.
My point isn’t a peacenik point of view.
My point is that I think the U.S. government wastes a lot of resources in defense of things that are not in our interests.
Your casual dismissal of our military dead indicates a real flaw in the logic around here. The folks on this site wave their flags and get hardons about sending our troops in the blow the bastards up.
Except we have been blowing the wrong bastards up for the wrong reasons.
Our military presence around the world, at the same time we are spending and printing money, is not a sustainable model. We would be better served having a military to defend our country, not the oil producing Arabs who screw us over every ten minutes.
But, you all like the TV shows, the videos, and war drums. It makes you feel like the great warriors of a generation of past; it makes you feel like the years spent in uniform were really worthwhile because if you don’t you realize you were fighting not for YOUR freedom but for the freedom of the house of Saud and the folks trying to get the rare earth elements out of the Afghan mountains.
But, you can rest assured—those chickens are going to come home to roost. And when they do you are going to be sitting around like all of those old fat commits with medals buttoned on their suit coats. With little else to show for it.
Thank you my FRiend! I am in as good health as could be expected and very thankful for it.
The good Lord blesses us all with many experiences in life. Some very pleasant and others more difficult. We cannot chose precisely what experiences come along...but we can all choose how we react to them.
I choose to look on these hardships as a blessings, and they have taught me a lot...and put me in a position where I have been able to help others. The love in our family (which has always ben strong) has increased.
All of that is stuff we get to take with us.
As to China. They are building up rapidly and using the funds from our trade imbalance to do so. They are not stupid and they would not be a “push over.” A lot of people thought that about Japan before World War II. While we did defeat them, and ultimately, very soundly, we lost a hundred thousand personnel against them with almost ten times that number wounded.
We also lost untold ships, aircraft, and other equipment, bases, etc.
We need to be vigilant and we desperately need to stop sending money to our enemies, either in trade imbalances or especially foreign aide. we also need to stop wasting hundreds of billions on proven ineffective welfare programs that are only meant to make subservient people out of those who get hooked on them, and instead, unlock the job creation capabilities of the American free market.
Oh well...you know all of these things...hehehe, it’s for the lurkers.
Bravo Zulu! and God’s speed.
I haven’t casually dismissed the deaths of the GI’s I and my son and brothers served with, so you can drop that lie and examine why you would try to make it in the first place.
I honor their sacrifice, you are the one who dishonors them with the usual peacenik view of thinking that the world would be fine since 1974 without their point of view, and their sacrifice while putting their own lives on the line in support of it.
You even mock their and we veterans patriotism and intelligence as you describe us all as gullible fools and tools.
You were a Lieutenant in the military that you mock and insult?
In a direct conflict, these facts will lead to many many more millions dead than necessary.
I am not insulting anyone.
Tell me a military action since Vietnam that was in the national security interest of the US—with the single exception of the attacks in Afghanistan in 2001-02.
You are the one that equated the deaths of our soldiers to those killed in traffic accidents. I think dismissing their deaths as less than those of mostly drunk idiots is an insult to the dead soldiers.
What I am saying is that you appear to be unable to step back from your service—which I do respect and honor—to see how the governments of the US have used military force.
Young men have been put in harms way for nothing that constituted a threat. And even in the cases where we were attacking a threat, we turned it into an occupation so that their girls could go to school? Are you kidding me?
We should use our massive and superior force, destroy the enemy threat and go home.
Instead we waste our monetary and physical resources trying to convert savages who haven’t changed their view of the world since BEFORE the dark ages.
Other countries have strong economies because our military has been stationed there to protect them. It is time to bring them home. It is time to let the Arabs defend their own homes. It is time for Germany to step up. It is time for South Korea and Japan to step up.
If we do not do that, we will be faced with a massive conflict and we will not be able to really secure our true national interest. Lets go back to the premise of my original comment. I think this nation would have been better off not engaging in a lot of the crap we’ve found ourselves involved in. Our forces would be well trained, well equipped and our national economy would be much healthier.
Why does anyone questioning the application of US forces get called unpatriotic?
I am well aware of the sacrifices of the individual soldiers, their families, and the dangers they face. I absolutely and unequivocally support the member of the US Armed Forces.
Soldiers, sailors, Aircrew and Marines go where they are told and do what they are ordered to do. Anyone criticizing the application of that force and indeed criticizes the individuals, does not have an understanding of how stuff works. I understand how it works.
I do not support the application of that force. And the nation would be a better place if we were more thoughtful about where we sent them, how we limit them, and what we do after we win the battle.
So, if you are unable to make that distinction, I have to question your basic understanding of how things work.
You introduced the war less Russians........
Given the topic of what was learned by study of Gulf War, have the Chinese learned they are not the equal of the Russians in training and weapons?
I think war between china and Russia is more likely than either with the USA
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