Mar 2, 2011

China PLA Snippets

[Excerpts from PLA Daily online edition].

·         Legal System. The Legal Affairs Bureau of the Central Military Commission (CMC) brought out that in the final year of the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), the military legislative work of China made great achievements and the military legal system with Chinese characteristics basically took shape. The CMC formulated and revised five military administrative regulations including the Regulations on Soldiers in Active Service and the Regulations on Weapons and Equipment Quality Control, the CMC formulated and revised 12 military regulations including the common regulations, and the general headquarters/departments, services and arms, and military area commands of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enacted and revised 100-plus military rules and regulations.

·         Naval Escort. The eighth Chinese naval escort fleet, which consists of two missile frigates, left for the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters to protect merchant ships from rampant piracy in the area. 　　After arriving, the two ships -- Ma'anshan and Wenzhou -- will be joined by Qiandaohu, a supply ship that is already patrolling the waters with the seventh escort fleet. China sent its first convoy fleet to the Gulf of Aden and the Somali waters in December 2008. The seven convoy fleets have so far escorted over 3,400 Chinese and foreign ships through troubled waters and have rescued 33 ships from pirate attacks.

·         Regional Railway Management – PLA Takes Over. According to Wang Aiguo, director of the Joint Logistics Department of the Shenyang Military Area Command (MAC) of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 10 regional military transport management committees including that in Dalian and Dandong under the jurisdiction of the military representative office have started a new mechanism for regional military transport management, marking a profound change of the railway military transport management mode in the Shenyang Theater. Under the new military transport mode, the leading right of regional military transport is transferred from railway functional departments to grass-roots military representative offices. In military transport management, the military representative offices take the leading role and the railway stations and sections act as the main bodies.

·         Camouflage. A special research team tackled difficulties of the project jointly with the Construction Engineering Institute of the GLD of the PLA. After nearly 10 years of systematic research, the team made breakthrough in dozens of key technologies, including the major breakthrough in military project camouflage technology.

·         Electronic Command Centre. Shenyang Military Area Command of the People’s Liberation Army operationalised a command center with an electronic combat situation map on the large screen turned into three-dimensional images in a twinkling, displaying the real-time images of the motorized marching and tactical drill of the troops of the division in divided frequency. Liu Fengqi, commander of the division, told the reporters that the digital ground mapping information system newly developed by the division made the “battlefield” visible and transparent. The system is made up of several mobile shelters including mapping, environmental simulation and satellite positioning. It can display not only three-dimensional geographic information, but real-time track. It can also display the dynamic positions of the troops and main battle equipment.

·         Submarine Generator. An AC-DC integrated dual-winding generator system with fully independent intellectual property right that is able to simultaneously provide high-quality AC and DC power supply for new-type submarines won the first prize of the 2010 National Scientific and Technological Progress Award. The generator developed by the research team headed by Ma Weiming through more than ten years’ efforts boasts edge-cutting technological properties. Compared with the two generating units respectively providing AC and DC, the new generator is 40% smaller and lighter, and reduces engineering cost by 40%.

·         Automated Armaments Testing. In light of the requirements of actual combat, the Armaments Department of the Guangzhou MAC joined hands with seven military and civilian educational institutions to tackle key problems and successfully constructed the precise support information network linking the MAC and the depots (shops) in 2010, possessing such functions as paperless allocation of revolving equipment and intelligent testing of new and high-tech ammunitions. The reporters saw at the ammunition testing site that the depot would deliver a batch of rocket shells in a short time according to the demand of the front troops. After the examiner inserted testing cables one after another into the shells, the computer would display the performance parameters of every shell in a few seconds and quickly sequenced the shells according to their quality. When in live-fire, the troop unit distributed the shells scientifically to the key targets and the general targets according to the quality analysis data done by the computer, greatly improving the hitting accuracy and the kill probability of key targets.

·         Operation of Party Organs with PLA. China's Central Military Commission has amended a regulation to improve the operation of Party organs in armed forces. The amendment has incorporated the principles and spirits of the 17th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress, the Fourth and Fifth Plenum of the 17th CPC Central Committee into the regulation, said the statement from the commission. The amended rules aim to reinforce the guidelines of Scientific Outlook on Development in the development of national defense and armed forces. It reflects the new missions of Chinese armed forces to increase the core capability of winning local wars in conditions of informatization and the capability of conducting military operations other than war, the statement said. It also includes recent moves to regulate the behavior of military officers and anti-corruption rules. With the new rules, the CPC organs in armed forces will work to improve decision making in a scientific, democratic and lawful way, add creativity in their daily work, unite soldiers and officers and improve efficiency so as to play a leading role in the development of armed forces and the operation of their missions, it said.