China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
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China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
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Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#2[deleted]
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#3ah yes, the good ol' yellow peril two-step.
weak, yet dangerous.
smart, yet uninnovative.
studious, yet aggressive.
ubiquitous, yet surreptitious.
industrious, yet backwards.
cultured, yet barbaric.
coy, yet brave.
did i miss any?
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#4I bet you could say all or nearly all of these bad-sounding things about the US military or any randomly selected Western military. There is surely some crank out there patrolling a SAC installation on horseback. The US certainly has capital ships that don't work and have to go right back to the shipyard. The US still operates 1950s-era aircraft that have been repurposed from airlift to bombers to mine layers to signals intelligence to tankers. "Elite" pilots of the USAF, many of whom are in fact in the ANG, also fly 10 hours per month, or even less[1].
Overall I'm not sure who this author is arguing with. It reads like pure strawman stuff.
[1] http://www.airforcemag.com/AircraftAccidentReports/Documents... page 13
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#5I don't get it. If China's military is as weak and as far behind as the author claims, why is he worrying about China's military threats? It should be a cakewalk to head off any threats from them with our much more advanced capabilities. Why is he advocating to increase the military spending for US and its allies? Aren't our current capabilities so much better and so much ahead of them that they will have no hope of catching up?
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#6> The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a party army, the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control...Chinas military is intentionally organized to bureaucratically enforce risk-averse behavior, because an army that spends too much time training is an army that is not engaging in enough political indoctrination. Beijings worst nightmare is that the PLA could one day forget that its number one mission is protecting the Communist Partys civilian leaders against all its enemies especially when the CCPs enemies are domestic student or religious groups campaigning for democratic rights, as happened in 1989 and 1999, respectively.
And in 1992, US marines marched into Los Angeles because domestic groups wanted democratic rights, like not being beaten by police officers once down on the ground.
As far as political loyalty in the army for communist countries - Stalin purged his army of generals whose loyalty was suspect prior to World War II. Hitler did not. Stalin won the war, and Hitler's high command tried to kill him.
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#7This is the most interesting part, for me:
> The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators. This system ensures that the interests of the party’s civilian and military leaders are merged, and for this reason new Chinese soldiers entering into the PLA swear their allegiance to the CCP, not to the PRC constitution or the people of China.
> For that reason, the PLA has to engage in constant “political work” at the expense of training for combat. This means that 30 to 40 percent of an officer’s career (or roughly 15 hours per 40-hour work week) is wasted studying CCP propaganda, singing patriotic songs, and conducting small group discussions on Marxist-Leninist theory.
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#8I bet you could say all or nearly all of these bad-sounding things about the US military or any randomly selected Western military. There is surely some crank out there patrolling a SAC installation on horseback. The US certainly has capital ships that don't work and have to go right back to the shipyard. The US still operates 1950s-era aircraft that have been repurposed from airlift to bombers to mine layers to sign…
Are you serious? The U.S. has successfully fought wars in the recent past. High ranking officers are routinely sacked when they lose touch of soldiering and their mission fails. The U.S. version of party political indoctrination is just a little silliness like lesbian sensitivity training.
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#9Hmm. The Sino-Indian war dismissed as a minor border skirmish? It only went for a month, but it was in the Himalayas. Also, it only took the Chinese a month to get what they wanted[2].
Not to be outdone by the conventional army, China’s powerful strategic rocket troops, the Second Artillery Force, still uses cavalry units to patrol its sprawling missile bases deep within China’s vast interior.
Is there any evidence apart from some staged pictures of some event that this is actually true?
the Air Force continues to use a 1950s Soviet designed airframe, the Tupolev Tu-16, as a bomber (its original intended mission), a battlefield reconnaissance aircraft, an electronic warfare aircraft, a target spotting aircraft, and an aerial refueling tanker. Likewise, the PLA uses the Soviet designed Antonov An-12 military cargo aircraft for ELINT (electronic intelligence) missions, ASW (anti-submarine warfare) missions, geological survey missions, and airborne early warning missions. It also has an An-12 variant specially modified for transporting livestock, allowing sheep and goats access to remote seasonal pastures.
Interestingly, the C-130 is still in use by US forces for most of the uses listed above. It first flew in 1954[3]. The B-52 remains the primary US bomber. It first flew in 1952[4].
Take the PLA’s lack of combat experience, for example. A few minor border scraps aside, the PLA hasn’t seen real combat since the Korean War. This appears to be a major factor leading it to act so brazenly in the East and South China Seas.
The more aggressive Chinese position in the South China Sea is possibly the most important strategic development in the last 5 years (and of course it has pretty much been ignored by most media). Saying it is caused by PLA leadership while ignoring the HUGE OIL AND GAS RESERVES the area has is a pretty major oversight (One of the Chinese leadership's biggest concerns is how dependant it is on overseas sources of energy, and how easily those sources could be cut off. A source of oil and gas in Chinese controlled waters is something they see as a major goal, and they may well be willing to fight for it).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War#Ceasefire
Re: China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military
#10I bet you could say all or nearly all of these bad-sounding things about the US military or any randomly selected Western military. There is surely some crank out there patrolling a SAC installation on horseback. The US certainly has capital ships that don't work and have to go right back to the shipyard. The US still operates 1950s-era aircraft that have been repurposed from airlift to bombers to mine layers to sign…
>"Elite" pilots of the USAF, many of whom are in fact in the ANG, also fly 10 hours per month, or even less[1].
Often ANG pilots are even better than the full-timers because they tend to be commercial pilots that joined the Air Force part-time because flying an F22 is the pilot equivalent of driving a Ferrari. These commercial pilots get thousands of hours per year of flying, which is often much more than a full-time Airman would get.
That being said, I agree that some of the author's arguments were very weak. For example, the suggestion that hosting morale boosting activities in the middle of a training exercise is somehow a sign of mission-failure. With the possible exception of North Korea, everyone does that. Hell, there was even a group of terrorists that played soccer daily inside a hostage-filled building surrounded by teams of special forces and law enforcement that wanted to kill them.