PLA gets major information warfare upgrade

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

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Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a major reorganization of the People’s Liberation Army last week, setting up a new strategic service arm in charge of information warfare, according to the Beijing Defense Ministry and state media.

The new information support force and three other military components will replace the relatively recently created Strategic Support Force that was set up nine years ago to coordinate information, cyber and space warfare activities.

Mr. Xi said in announcing the overhaul that information warfare conducted by the new military arm represents a vital power in modern warfare, the official China Daily reported. Mr. Xi, who is also chairman of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, or CMC, described the move as part of efforts for strengthen the army, which he has ordered to become an advanced military force by the 2030s.

The CMC is the most important military organ in a system that regime founder Mao Zedong once said believes that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The Chinese leader was photographed handing the flag of the new military information support unit to its commander, Lt. Gen. Bi Yi, and party political commissar Gen. Li Wei at a ceremony at CMC headquarters in Beijing. Gen. Bi was commander of the old Strategic Support Force.

“The information support force is a brand new strategic branch of the PLA and a key pillar of the integrated development and use of the network information system,” Mr. Xi was quoted as saying, using the abbreviation for People’s Liberation Army. “It plays an important role and bears great responsibility in promoting the PLA’s high-quality development and the ability to fight and win in modern warfare.”

Mr. Xi stressed that the new force must maintain “absolute loyalty” to the Chinese Communist Party.

The main focus of the unit will be to use information to support combat operations through maintaining the free flow of data, integrating information systems, protecting information security and supporting the military’s joint operations, Mr. Xi said. The information support force is also tasked with increasing innovation — also a key objective of the Pentagon’s current military modernization — and strengthening military coordination and sharing of assets, he said.

The new force has been ordered to form a “network information system” to support modern combat operations “with Chinese characteristics,” Mr. Xi said.

A Pentagon spokesman had no comment on the changes. The Strategic Support Force, created in 2015, was disbanded under the reform and its space force and cyberspace force will now be separate sub-services. At the Chinese Defense Ministry on Friday,  spokesman Sr. Col. Wu Qian called the reorganization a “new system of services and arms.”

Four main services will remain — the army, navy, air force and rocket force. Replacing what had been the fifth service, the Strategic Support Force, are four branches that the Chinese military calls “arms,” including the aerospace force, cyberspace force, the information support force and joint logistics support force.

Col. Wu said the space force will bolster space travel and enhance crisis management in space. The cyberspace force is in charge of network security against cyberattacks and espionage that Col. Wu described as a “severe threat.”

Further details of the military reforms were not disclosed, but Western analysts said the changes appeared designed to further highlight the importance of information warfare in China’s plans for future warfare.

Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, former intelligence director for the Pacific Fleet, said the changes were not the result of recent cases of corruption and purges within the Chinese military, as some analysts suggest.

“These changes aren’t the result of the purges, but the maturation and refinement of the former Strategic Support Force as driven by changes in technology,” he said.

Brendan S. Mulvaney, director of the Air Force think tank China Aerospace Studies Institute, stated in a report that the changes were a significant military reform: “This new force appears to be the [now former] information communications base, responsible for PLA communications networks and network defense,” he wrote.

“The Chinese see the ‘Information Domain’ as a domain of war unto itself; equal to the physical domains of air, land, sea, and space,” he added. “In fact, the CCP’s PLA talks about conducting operations in those physical domains in order to support operations in the information domain.”

China affairs analyst Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, said numerous questions remain on the new information unit, including whether it will host Chinese intelligence organizations.

“Whatever is going on, I lean towards seeing this change as another sign that Xi can mostly do what he wants with the PLA, not as a sign of weakness,” Mr. Bishop said. Technology and warfare have changed since 2015, as shown in the Ukraine war, prompting Mr. Xi and other leaders ordered another reorganization to make the PLA more effective, he said.

A commentary in the PLA Daily, the official military newspaper, said victory in modern warfare is dependent on “information dominance.”

“Modern conflicts are competitions between systems and structures, where control over information equates to control over the initiative in war,” the outlet stated.

The new system moved two elements of the Strategic Support Force — the space systems department and network systems department — into different units.

Spacecom: China space buildup is ’breathtaking’

Air Force Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of the Space Command, said Wednesday that China is rapidly building up military space capabilities that will likely be strengthened following recent structural reforms by the People’s Liberation Army. Gen. Whiting told reporters during a visit to South Korea and Japan that China has tripled the number of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellite in orbit over the past six years.

Those satellites are key to establishing military power in space.

“Frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space, and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities,” the U.S. general said. “They’re also using space to make their terrestrial forces, their army, their navy, the marine corps, their air force, more precise, more lethal and more far-ranging. … And so that, obviously, is a cause for concern and something that we are watching very, very closely.”

China’s current space weaponry consists of ground-launched anti-satellite missiles capable of hitting satellites in multiple orbits, electronic jammers and directed energy guns and cyberattack capabilities.

Chinese leaders highlighted the military’s future space ambitions by carrying out recent military reforms, Gen. Whiting said. Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that a new aerospace force was being created, along with several other new arms of the military.

The reforms “further enhance the importance of space and information warfare and cyber operations” in China’s military, Gen. Whiting said, offering the first official U.S. military assessment of announced reorganization.

Gen. Whiting called for greater transparency from Beijing in developing civilian and space forces, including efforts to travel to the moon. “We hope there’s not a military component to that. But we would certainly welcome more transparency,” he said.

Report: U.S. research helps China’s hypersonic missiles

Chinese organizations involved in developing hypersonic missiles and related technologies have benefited from American research, according to a report made public earlier this month by an Air Force think tank.

“The PRC organizations with which U.S. researchers collaborate on hypersonics include not only actual military organizations, such as the National University of Defense Technology, but also many organizations closely affiliated with the military, such as Beihang University,” the report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute says, using the abbreviation for People’s Republic of China. “These collaborations have the potential to support PRC military research, indicating the need for appropriate screening mechanisms and careful due diligence before embarking on such collaborations.”

The report said a “significant amount” of U.S.-China collaboration on hypersonics has taken place, based on data obtained from Chinese online sources. The collaboration appears focused mainly on propulsion technology along with design technology, materials processing and manufacturing, and flight navigation, guidance and control.

The Pentagon is in a race with China and Russia to build hypersonic missiles, weapons that travel at speeds faster than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to avoid modern missile defenses and tracking sensors.

The report concluded: “Overall, while U.S. collaborations with PRC institutions on hypersonics are relatively limited and at first glance do not appear to focus on testing applications of existing hypersonic technologies, they are still significant and often involve PRC military or military-affiliated institutions.”

The collaboration appears to be the result of a 40-year U.S. policy that sought to play down or dismiss threats posed by China under the idea that trade and engagement would lead to liberalization and modifications to the communist system. Instead, China has reverted to orthodox Marxist-Leninist policies under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s so-called national rejuvenation policies.

• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.