China military 'lean, responsive' after cutbacks

reuteurs ^ | 1/9/06 | na

[Flavius]

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's military has cut back its troops by 200,000, the official mouthpiece of the People's Liberation Army said on Monday, reinforcing its high-tech military ambitions to overtake rival Taiwan. ADVERTISEMENT

The Liberation Army Daily said the two-year program to slim China's military was finished on schedule at the end of 2005, and troop numbers were actually down by 230,000, or just over 9 percent.

China had 2.5 million serving military in 2003 when the cuts started. In 1987, it had about 4.2 million.

The reforms included reducing layers in the command hierarchy, cutting non-battle units such as schools and farms, and rearranging officer duties.

"The personnel system reforms have brought heartening changes to our military development. They've compressed troop numbers and optimized the personnel structure," the paper said.

"Our military is marching toward the goal of an appropriately sized, structurally balanced, lean, command-responsive fighting force."

After the cutbacks, the proportion of military serving in the infantry had fallen to a "historic low," while the share in the navy, air force and Second Artillery Corps -- which maintains China's nuclear missiles -- had risen, the paper said.

The paper also said that "high-tech" forces had increased. China has accelerated developing or buying several advanced weapons, including surveillance satellites, missiles, and "blue water" naval vessels and submarines.

Military analysts say that many of these innovations were intended to reinforce China's military threat against Taiwan -- the self-governed island that China claims as its own -- and to counter U.S. military dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

China, which may analysts believe still lacks the military strength for decisive action against Taiwan, has said it will not rule out war if Taiwan pushes for formal independence.

The two sides have been ideological foes since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

China's retired party chief, Jiang Zemin, was still head of the Central Military Commission when the cutbacks began, but an editorial in the Liberation Army Daily reserved praise for Hu Jintao, Jiang's successor who became chairman of the CMC in September 2004.

"Chairman Hu's instructions set a clear direction for completing adjustment and reform of the military personnel system," it said.

On Tuesday, Hu visited the Liberation Army Daily and told its staff to "adhere to a correct political orientation."

China's official military budget in 2005 was about $30 billion, a 12.6 percent rise on the previous years. But many foreign militaries and experts believe the country's real military spending is significantly higher.

A Pentagon report in July said the United States was concerned about China's military modernization and estimated China spent $90 billion on defense in 2005 -- an estimate that some U.S. defense experts have said is probably an overcount.

The Liberation Army Daily said more reforms to China's military were planned for 2006, including further reducing officer numbers.

[GeronL]

and we would believe anything coming from them because...?

[SteveMcKing]

China is a threat to Taiwan and possibly Japan.

The only threat they present to us is their export of arms, including WMDs. That is very bad of them.

[Global2010]

Rumor flying around is that the mega funds Congress has alloted to salvage companies to dismantle the Moth Ball Fleet of old Naval Ships.

Well the Rumor flying around is that the salvage companies are going to sell the metal scraps to China so they can have quality metals to build up there arsenals.

[Hypervigilant]

No 'f' in way!!!
What the hell is guiding this nation???

[son of caesar]

its called globalism. shame on you for not understanding that china is just as good as america is just as good as zimbabwe. you really should learn to get with the flow of things. sarcasm to you.

[peyton randolph]

China is a threat to Taiwan and possibly Japan.

I look for Japan to possess a nuclear arsenal within 10 years. The "Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki" contingent are dying of old age. The Chicom threat is a real and present danger that only nukes can deter.

[yankeedame]

IMHO, China has got itself a wolf by the ear: They can't hang on and they can't let go.

When these (young) men are dismissed from the military -- and almost certainly not pensioned -- they don't just vanish in to thin air. Ever since 1949 the Chinese Communist government has promised everyone a job. But no jobs has the government got...outside of things like pushing a broom or emptying "night soil" (chamber) pots every morning into the "honey wagon".

(B/c Chinese authorities never let anyone look at their books their claims of 8% growth rate , which we are expected to accept unquestionably, is doubtlessly a bunch of hooey.)

So, the CC government has the choice of either maintaining an obviously bloated military, or of setting tens of thousands of unemployed or woefully under-employed young men adrift.

[sukhoi-30mki]

I read in an article a few years back that countries like Japan & India(before it's N-tests) could have a small scale nuclear triad in operation within an year given the sophistication of their space & nuclear programmes & advanced submarine fleets.

[peyton randolph]

I read in an article a few years back that countries like Japan & India(before it's N-tests) could have a small scale nuclear triad in operation within an year given the sophistication of their space & nuclear programmes & advanced submarine fleets.

Undoubtedly. In addition, if Japan asks the U.S., I have no doubt that the U.S. would either give or sell nukes to Japan for its self-defense...a transaction that would take mere days.

[ricks_place]

...the official mouthpiece of the People's Liberation Army...

I am no defender of ChiComs but did you notice.... Reuters is awfully condescending referring to the Chinese Army spokesman as the mouthpiece. The MSM is on a slippy slope where Condi will be a moll, Cheney a Consigliere and Rumsfield an enforcer.

[SteveMcKing]

Here's a fun little music video they made for the Japanese military. I think they have the right spirit for the future.

http://cops.zive.net/c-board/file/jsdf2.wmv

[Cheburashka]

I seriously doubt that the United States would give completed nuclear weapons to anyone, even if it was not a violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Japan is a highly industrialized company and can certainly design and manufacture its own weapons in a very short time if it were to wish to.

[JustDoItAlways]

They are certainly not preparing for war with anyone if they are dropping their troop levels by 9% and only have 2.3 million men in the army (in a country of 1.4 billion.)

[Kuehn12]

My question is, Why after all the threats and machinations not a single shot has been fired across the Taiwan Strait? Why by the Chinese own estimations that they are at least 40 years away from being a medium size military power. No aircraft carriers, more than a decade away from having a fifth generation fighter, no real UAV capability, unproven Armed Forces as well as military equipment, a defense industry that is decades away from being able to produce advanced weapons at the same pace as western powers, no real blue water navy. Where is the fear of China coming from? China also rarely deploys its troops outside of the country. I base my concerns on hard evidence. So far, China is modernizing if Armed forces, and that might a problem in the distant future or might not be I can't say for sure right now.

[Cheburashka]

Not necessarily. If they're cutting 257,000 infantry soldiers who would only be useful in a World War II environment, and adding modernly equipped 50,000 marine, mechanized and mechanized infantry soldiers, that's a 9% cut, but a net increase in combat capability.
China has had a tradition of keeping a lot of men under arms that might not be too useful in a modern war.
An historical parallel would be the Crimean War, where the Russian infantry was still armed with smooth bore muskets right out of the Napoleonic wars. The British and The French were using rifled muskets with longer range and greater accuracy. The Russian infantry regiments were out-gunned and suffered accordingly.
After the war the Russians started upgrading their infantry weapons.
My point is that cutting superfluous soldiers can free up money for more modern equipment and increase combat capability. I do not know that this is the case with the Chinese, but it could be.

[Cheburashka]

All your points are valid, but you are assuming the past will be the same as the future.
I would point out that the population of China is four times the population of the United States and its economy is growing. When the per capita income of China is one fourth of the per capita income of the United States, theoretically it could pay for a Chinese military that is the equal of the United States.
I know there are technical issues. The Chinese don't yet know how to build aircraft carriers, and after they build them it will take years to lean how to operate them effectively. Same with all the branches of their military. But we are looking to the future, and what the Chinese can do down the road.
The United Sates worked to become a great naval power during the first half of the Twentieth Century. The U.S. Navy was not the equal of the British Navy in 1920. It was the superior of the British Navy in 1945. What was the date equality was achieved? I can't pinpoint an exact date, but it happened some time during those 25 years.
Of course the foreign policies of Britain and the U.S. never came into conflict, so there was never a war between the two. Perhaps there will never be a war between China and the U.S. But if there is a war we want to win it, and that means staying ahead, and being aware of what they are doing to catch up with us. Because they are chasing us.

[Paul_Denton]

China lacks power projection. That is true. The biggest threat from them is asymmetric warfare.

[Paul Ross]

Perhaps there will never be a war between China and the U.S.

Don't bet on it. So long as they are Communists ruling the roost over there, and undermining our own defenses here, we are in peril.

But if there is a war we want to win it, and that means staying ahead, and being aware of what they are doing to catch up with us. Because they are chasing us.

Correct.

Here is an area where the Chinese will show extraordinary interest, trying to get ahold of the technology from European sources such as our allies...without being as blatant as getting it right from us...(hence their powerplay on getting EU to drop its export restrictions)...so they can get us to be played off against our allies...all while the Chinese get technology they would otherwise have to sweat to recreate):

Italy Makes Inroads in Passive Radar
Aviation Week & Space Technology, 01/09/2006
Author: Andy Nativi

Italian researchers are making breakthroughs in passive radar technology, opening the door to detecting previously hard-to-track targets such as stealthy aircraft.

The Italian work is being driven by Finmeccanica, Elettronica and several academic institutions. NATO's Consultation, Command and Control Agency is also involved by supporting the multi-static passive radar activity. The studies have been largely shrouded in secrecy during the past few years, but they have received continuous support through research contracts from the Italian defense procurement agency's land systems branch. Italy has spent several million euros on the effort.

A prototype has been built and is being tested with meaningful results, military sources suggest. Those trials are showing not just laboratory results, but that the system has operationally relevant performances against targets ranging from aircraft and helicopters to missiles. Moreover, the system is offering attractive detection capabilities against many types of stealth targets that are almost invisible against conventional monostatic air-defense radar.

An active radar system sends out radio-frequency energy and waits for the returns to track a target. In contrast, a passive system exploits RF waves broadcast by other emitters (usually radio or TV signals), but also emissions from cellular phones, space-based systems such as GPS or an adversary's own radar.

The passive system needs to know the location of the emitters and measures the general electromagnetic environment when it's not disturbed by a target flying in an area. When a target flies through, the air-defense system can extrapolate the position of the target from the signal returned by the aircraft or cruise missile. It compares the signal that traveled directly from the emitter to the radar with one that was reflected by the target, measuring both the time and frequency difference of arrival. Depending on the number of transmitters used, the radar can develop a two- or three-dimensional target track, with an update rate faster than modern electronically scanned antennas.

One of the key benefits of the passive technology is that it can undermine radar stealth technology. Aircraft such as the F-117 generally try to absorb radar energy and deflect returns to the side, to avoid a useful return. But by using a multi-static concept, controlling those returns becomes much more complex and an air-defense system's chances of detecting a low-observable aircraft increase dramatically.

Researchers suggest they can use advanced automatic target recognition techniques to identify a target by comparing the detected radar cross section with the stored information. Moreover, low-observability efforts generally are tuned to specific frequencies--largely to avoid air-defense radars--but not optimized to combat the types of generic signals the passive system exploits; in effect, the radar nullifies the stealth advantage.

The concept of the passive air-defense radar is almost as old as the radar technology itself. In 1935, Robert Watson-Watt used a BBC shortwave RF transmitter in a monostatic passive system to spot a Heyford bomber at a distance of more than 10 km. (0.62 mi.). During World War II, attempts were made to field early-warning passive radars, including the German "Kleine Heidelberg" system. But what had been largely missing was the processing capability to compute accurate target coordinates in a tactically relevant way.

Officials from Finmeccanica's Selex Sistemi Integrati electronics unit report several breakthroughs in this arena. In fact, they say their prototype has demonstrated a detection range of more than 150 km. against a fighter-size target. This range depends mainly on the power of the transmitter: Typical frequency-modulation radio transmitters can easily deliver a range of at least 100 km., while powerful TV transmitters can achieve several hundred kilometers.

Another advantage of the passive system is that it's much cheaper than a conventional air-defense radar. Even an advanced receiver is not technically very difficult; the real challenge, therefore, is not in the receiver assembly but in the signal processing.

A key operational asset of the passive technology is that it complicates an adversary's suppression of enemy air-defense efforts. Since the radar does not emit, it can't be targeted by conventional anti-radiation missiles or be located by electronic support measures. In fact, an adversary would have to find the radar through other surveillance techniques and employ regular ordnance, which is more labor-intensive and takes longer. The clandestine nature of the passive systems also allows them to be deployed more closely to a combat zone.

Nevertheless, passive radars are mainly intended to complement, rather then replace, today's active air-defense systems, which are increasingly being eyed for ancillary missions, including electronic attack of a target. The passive radar adjuncts would be built to be relocatable, or even mobile, and employed as gap-fillers and adjuncts of larger, integrated air-defense systems.

However, passive radars aren't impervious to disruption. They are vulnerable to jamming--which can blanket the signals on which the radar depends--or to air-launched decoys that emit false signals to look like an aircraft. Moreover, the radio and TV transmitters on which the passive system relies are easy to identify and take down early in an air campaign.

THE POTENTIAL UTILITY of such devices has made passive technology a hotbed of research activity in most countries with major aerospace/defense industries.

In the U.S., Lockheed Martin is proposing what is probably the fourth generation of its Silent Sentry system. Lockheed Martin was one of the first to acknowledge its work in this field and now claims its system has a detection range of more than 220 km. relying on RF emissions from TV and radio transmitters. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and several universities--including the University of Washington, Georgia Tech and the University of Illinois--are involved in this field, as well as Raytheon, Dynetics and Avtec Systems.

In Europe, the French government through its Onera research arm is working on the technology, while Thales is busy with the Mokapa project, which would exploit TV transmitters. British efforts center on QinetiQ under the Passive Coherent Radar and the Celldar research programs. The latter exploit cellular phone signals. That effort has been underway since 1997, led by Roke Manor Research Ltd., which was joined in 2002 by BAE Systems. Similar studies are apparently underway in Russia and the Czech Republic.

[Kuehn12]

I agree, but any use of weapons in this manner would be easy to trace. It is even possible that we the United States wouldn't bother because of the size and extend of such an attack. The Chinese would know that, for example nuclear weapons give off a signature radiological emission which experts can easily trace given records of Chinese nuclear tests.