Farewell to the Chinese Strategic Support Force. Let's meet his replacements

The unexpected elimination of the People's Liberation Army unit that managed space, cyber and electronic warfare missions is all the more surprising given that the Strategic Support Force just seemed to make perfect sense.

On April 19, the PLA announcement that three equal forces – the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force and the Information Support Force – would be created to replace the SFF, itself created as part of the vast 2015 reorganization that also gave rise to the PLA Rocket Force.

At its inception, the SSF was hailed by national leaders and outside observers as a sign that the PLA was capable of real innovation. Placing interdependent missions such as space, cybersecurity, electronic warfare and other information missions such as psychological warfare under a single command was destined has create synergies between all these elements, facilitating joint operations and providing the PLA with advantages to dominate network-centric warfare and information space.

At least that's what the theory said. Today, the PLA, apparently unhappy with the results of its experiment, has divided the SSF into three component forces. The new soldiers structure There will be four services: the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Rocket Force, supported by four support forces reporting directly to the Supreme Central Military Commission: the Joint Logistics Support Force and the three news (Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force and Information Support Force).

Among the new forces, only the Information Support Force appears to have held a number of troops. ceremony. It notably included a speech by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who entrusted the new organization with great responsibility for advancing the military's high level of development and winning modern warfare. Xis Remarks also provided a little more information on the forces' new missions, indicating that the ISF will take charge of the construction and application of the integrated networked information system, ensuring smooth and unhindered flow of information, fusion of information resources and facilitating joint warfare.

The ISF will be supplemented by a cyberspace force, which will likely take over the cyberattack, defense and espionage missions of the former SSF network systems department. The PLA brief Press release provided little additional information, saying only that cybersecurity remains a global challenge and poses a serious threat to China. Developing cyberspace strength and cybersecurity and defense assets is important for strengthening national border cyber defense, quickly detecting and countering network intrusions, and maintaining national cyber sovereignty and information security. We actively advocate building a cyberspace characterized by peace, security, openness and cooperation, and commit to working with the international community to jointly build a community with a shared future in cyberspace.

Finally, the SSF's Space Systems Department will be transformed into a new Aerospace Force, which will take over the PLA's space mission. According to the vaguely worded press release, the new force will enhance the capacity to enter, exit and openly use space safely, by improving crisis management and the effectiveness of global governance in space and promoting the peaceful use of space space.

This would appear to create a structure closer to (although not entirely equivalent to) the US Military Space Force. Interestingly, while the official PLA website translates the new organization as Aerospace Force, Chinese daily newspapers The English edition translates it as Space Force. The PLA plays an outsized role in China's space program. For example, all space launch facilities and astronaut training and management were controlled by the SSF, and will now likely be controlled by the Aerospace Force, making the new mission of the Aerospace Forces closer to that of the US Space Force. as well as most of NASA.

Much is still unknown about how exactly this will play out. For example, the FSS has also overseen a series of research institutes focused on the development and integration of future weapons, but it is not yet clear from public reporting where they will end up.

The drastic reform of its structure, less than a decade after its last reform, gives ammunition to both pessimists and optimists who observe the development of the PLA.

On the one hand, this suggests that the PLA's much-heralded 2015 reforms, which were supposed to transform it into a modern joint force, have not gone smoothly. Where the Pentagon see Facing the growing threat from China's cybersecurity, information and space efforts, China's military leaders have realized the need to make major changes. Placing all of these missions under one roof did not create new efficiencies, at least not enough to justify the problems, and may simply have placed a new layer of bureaucracy between these missions and the CMC. In this way, the new structure actually recalls the structure of the pre-reform PLA, in which these missions were controlled by different directly subordinate departments of the CMC. This follows a major purge of some of the most senior officers in the PRC's defense establishment, including: would haveleaders of the SSF.

On the other hand, these reforms also suggest that the PLA is not a sclerotic organization, but is capable of candidly assessing its shortcomings, finding innovative solutions, and making changes where necessary. This is a major change from just a few years ago, when PRC leaders struggled to implement even relatively modest reforms in the face of an entrenched bureaucracy.

And despite everything that changes, there are many things that don't change. According to an editorial released In Daily PLA After the creation of the ISF, even if the structure is new, the theories of victory underlying the PLA remain the same: victory is achieved through information. Modern warfare is a confrontation between system and system, a struggle between system and system. Whoever has information superiority will have the initiative in war. This new reform aims to push the PLA further towards this sustainable objective.

Matt Bruzzese is a Senior Chinese Language Analyst for BluePath Labs.

PW Singer is the bestselling author of books on war and technology such as Wired for War, Ghost FleetAnd Burning; senior fellow at New America; and co-founder of Useful Fiction, a strategic storytelling company