Are China’s Military Logistics Better Than the Russian Military’s?

so good morning i'm bonnie lynn director of the china power project and senior fellow for asian security at csis thank you all very much for joining us for this event today's event will focus on chinese military logistics a key people's liberation army capability is of course china's ability to project military power and use military force for many of us observing russia's invasion of ukraine we're seeing how much logistic problems have impacted russian military operations china is similarly watching the problems that russia encountered in ukraine have likely reinforced beijing state to further improve and strengthen its logistics this will likely build on efforts already underway including china's establishment of its joint logistics support force in 2016 as part of sweeping pla reforms under xi jinping as we evaluate china's ability to use force in its neighborhood or further abroad it will be increasingly important to understand the state of pla logistics and whether chinese logistics can support and sustain significant military operations this was the main topic explored at a late march early april 2022 u.s army war college conference on studying the pla i'm grateful that several of the key speakers from that conference will be joining us today to share their insights and findings from the most recent research on pln logistics i want to note that the views that they are sharing today are their own individual personal views and they do not represent the views of their particular institution the department of defense or the us government so joining me today and i'll name them in order they will present is colonel george shatner director of strategic research analysis at the strategic studies institute of the u.s army war college going second after george will be dr joel westnow a senior research fellow in the center for the study of chinese military affairs within the institute for national strategic studies and national defense university presenting together and after that will be dod analyst mr josh aristigi a and then also with josh will be also dod analyst major james roger jr sessions and finally doc mr lonnie henley who is a professional lecturer at the eliot school of international affairs at george washington university a retired defense intelligence officer for east asia at the defense intelligence agency will help us wrap up the panel so many thanks for all five of you for taking time out of your schedule for this panel i'll first turn the floor to george he will share why the us army war college decided to focus on pla logistics what is logistics and what are the high level insights he may have and after all of our panelists provide their remarks i will moderate a short q a discussion to submit a question please write your question using the qa chat function on zoom so george over to you bonnie thanks so much the army war college and the strategic studies institute really appreciate appreciate you and csis organizing and hosting this panel falling from the pla conference as you noted the army war college hosted it back that was actually 31 march due to april this year at carlisle barracks in pennsylvania just if i could have some brief history about the conference series it actually began all the way back in 1990. the last strategic studies institute has been organizing and hosting it since 1999. the last fully in-person meeting prior to this year was in 2018 and that was due to cobit and scheduling issues so we were really thrilled to be back this year with an in-person event and we were also very excited to have as our new co-sponsor the national ground intelligence center or indic and we thought that more fully involving members from the intelligence community really helped elevate kind of the discussion and the ideas that were exchanged additionally we were pretty fortunate to have general charlie flynn the commander of u.s army pacific as our keynote speaker to open the conference and we also had ms zanthi karis the principal director for china and the under secretary of defense for policy office as a special guest speaker and having the perspective of both senior leaders we thought really made the event especially strong so as you stated the the focus of the conference was on pla logistics and sustainment sometimes those two terms logistics and sustainment get confused or used interchangeably but there is a critical distinction within u.s military doctrine at least sustainment is the broader provision of critical supplies functions and services to maintain operations until hopefully mission accomplishment logistics is just one of the critical aspects of sustainment others include personnel services healthcare and even financial support logistics though is specific to the movement and support of forces acquiring goods storing them transporting them maintaining equipment and even constructing facilities so we chose logistics logistics and sustainment as the conference focus uh really back in the fall of last year and well before the russian invasion of ukraine mostly we did so because we recognized that the topic of logistics tends not to get as much attention as the combat capabilities of the pla and as the pla continues to build and modernize its combat forces it's important to examine if the capabilities meant to support combat operations are also being developed because as general flynn said in his keynote remarks logistics is the oxygen of battle and that's really such great imagery i think that gets the point across you know imagine if two fighters couldn't breathe uh the fight wouldn't last long or if imagine if one fighter could breathe freely and the other was constrained in some way the advantage for the other fighter would be obvious so a state can build all the combat power muscle at once but if it can't feed that muscle or move it to where it needs to be then that combat power won't be very effective or won't even survive so it was a full conference as you said and uh i'll just for the benefit of those uh listening in i thought i would briefly uh mention each of the paper topics the panels that we had and who the authors were so our first panel was on national level logistics looking across the whole of china if you will and we had a paper on joint force logistics support to theater commands that was uh joel presented that paper and he's on the panel today of course we also had a paper from aaron richter at dia and a co-author ben rosen at associ they focused on mobilization support to logistics and sustainment then we had uh our second panel was on service level logistics actual services within the pla themselves and we had a paper focused on the pla army logistics josh and jr were the authors there and they're on the panel today we also had a paper on pla navy and their at-sea sustainment capabilities that that those authors were justin boges and travis donley out of the office of naval intelligence uh and then to wrap up that panel on service level capabilities we also had a paper uh by eli turk from the china aerospace studies institute at air university and he focused on pla capability to sustain air combat operations as you might expect our third panel was logistics in remote regions and overseas the first paper there was uh you were one of the co-authors pli's growing air power projection capabilities in western theater specifically western theater command particularly along the the border region with with india and then our last paper was by dr chris young at ring four university he looked at logistics and sustainment issues in the pla based in djibouti as kind of a test case uh to understand how the pla might seek to project power sustain and project power from a remote location so that's a quick rundown of the papers we had and and and the authors so as you can tell it was uh it was a full slate uh you know i think it was a really a good event overall uh so as we've been building the conference reports coming out of the event and compiling the papers uh into a volume for publication later this year hopefully in the fall time frame uh many key points i think stood out really but for me they shared a common thread and i would term that that the question of experience does the pla have the practical understanding that typically comes from the experience of operating against a live enemy does the pla truly know how to execute sustainable logistics well enough to support a major military military operation over time and over distance so it you know it's one thing to make to make the plans on paper it's another to field some capabilities in garrison it's yet another to exercise those capabilities more games or training events but until a military has to fight against the deadly thinking enemy deal with the fog and friction of modern war it's tremendously difficult to know if systems such as sustainment will be able to bear the heat and weight of actual combat the conference offer authors uh pointed out as i said many great points some of them you'll hear from here in just a moment but i think a couple of these help highlight that question of experience there are real questions about the command logistics or command relationships between the pla theater commands and the joint logistics support force that could lead potentially to an inefficient transition to wartime logistics and if the pla isn't proficient in making this leap to a new structure during war how well can they be assured that that even works for them another author pointed out that at the national level there are different views within china about the chain of command for the defense mobilization system if these diversion views are serious enough would china really be able to sustain a large scale operation that requires generating resources over the long term there seem to be some surprising shortfalls in logistic support for pla army combat battalions and additionally the pla makes we think little use of containerized goods at the brigade and lower levels so the pla doesn't have enough people or units dedicated to supplying the fight or it isn't using modern logistics methods then how long can the pla really expect to operate at the tactical unit level where the fighting really takes place and then finally other authors assess that the pla navy has a low number of replenishment ships given the size of its combatant fleet and that the pla air force facilities often seem to lack enough aircraft apron space for maintenance operations so i don't mean to suggest that the conference found that the pla is incapable of sustaining large-scale military operations our discussions highlighted some notable potential shortfalls and points of friction within the pla that's true but we've also seen that the pla has successfully sustained counter piracy maritime operations for many years now as well as conducted non-combatant evacuation operations far from china they've also evidenced an increasing ability uh to move forces across the vast distances of china and you know conducting large-scale uh exercises they just not done any of that uh with a modern military shooting at them uh so with the focus of this panel in mind you know as you mentioned we've seen how russia struggled early on its war against ukraine russia had months to build its invasion force uncontested and to put the sustainment systems in place they chose the timing of the operation and they were moving across land to an immediately adjacent country and yet russian forces faltered pretty badly in the face of ukrainian resistance unable to sustain operational momentum more than a couple of weeks before they had to retract and reset their forces so with some of the unknown issues in pla sustainment how would the pla be able to project decisive combat power say across the 90 or so miles of the taiwan strait against a modern forces intent on defending their independence the conference didn't really arrive i don't think at any firm conclusion on that particular question but it did tell us that we have a lot more work to do to understand the pla sustainment capabilities and so i think with that i'll close there and i really look forward to hearing from the other panelists and again really appreciate the opportunity to participate today george thank you very much for a great laying down of how the conference went as well as the topics covered the conference as george mentioned we'll first turn to joel for his uh the paper that he presented which was on uh joint pla logistics particularly at the theater level so joel over to you great well thanks thanks so much uh bonnie and uh delighted uh to be uh to be here um so i'm going to dive right right into the contents of the paper so what i was doing for this conference was sort of a high level look um at the organizational transformation of pla logistics so over the last decade the pla itself has undergone a monumental organizational change under the leadership of xi jinping many different elements of this um logistics has been somewhat overshadowed by some other changes the creation of the theater command system the creation of the strategic support force and other changes but it's quite significant i think for the reasons that george laid out that sustainment logistics are quite critical enablers of warfighting for any military including the pla um so what i'm going to do here is to give you a quick overview of the key findings of the paper and then tee things up for it for josh and jr so the first thing i think that needs to be said is that for the pla there is a critical distinction between joint and service logistics this is how they talk about logistics uh so service logistics would be things like specialized spare parts certain transportation units basically anything that is owned and accomplished within the individual services joint logistics refers to general purpose activities things like fuel resupply food water medical services and supplies things that cut across service boundaries and so for the last 25 years or so the pla has been in a process of consolidating as much as possible these sorts of general supplies and to some degree transportation for the purpose of reducing costs and increasing efficiency uh so the major change under xi jinping has been further consolidating joint logistics into a single entity so prior to the reforms joint logistics in the pla were handled within the seven military regions uh and so you didn't have one single uh supply chain for instance for fuel you had seven and so what the pla has done is since 2017 when when this organization was rolled out has been to create this entity called the joint logistics support force which is a national entity that oversees these functions across the entire pla and so there are a couple important reasons why they have done this change first has been to further increase uh cost efficiency and management of the logistics uh system so now you can further consolidate supply chains you can improve a standardization of logistics resources you can oversee the disposition of assets and resources at a national level and you need a national level headquarters to do that and the other reason is really operational and so china faces a number of important contingencies mostly around its border and coastal regions uh so if you have a single operational logistics uh headquarters what you're able to do is to garner muster resources from not only a single region but from across an entire national level uh supply chain and to be able to surge those resources to uh the critical point in a timely way and so we actually saw this on full display two two and a half years ago now in the opening phase of china's response to the covet epidemic in in which the joint logistics support force was basically tasked with leading the response so providing medical uh services providing critical medical uh supplies building makeshift hospitals and so on um but those resources were marshalled not only from the vicinity of central china they were gathered from everywhere in china and brought by rail by air uh and by uh ground transportation all the way uh into wuhan in a fairly timely way with in my view a fairly high level of success and so this was really the first uh critical test or operational practice if you will uh for the joint logistics support force uh so they were fighting an epidemic not fighting an enemy uh you know a human enemy if you will uh but they did achieve some some success and i think they derive some lessons from that experience uh so the trade-off that the pla made in moving to this consolidated system though was the reduction of unified control at the theater level uh for logistics uh functions uh so as i said earlier prior to the reforms the military regions own joint logistics after the reforms those functions were shifted so theater commanders so uh the senior operational commanders responsible for different sectors of china's borders essentially um no longer have at their disposal a direct authority over joint logistics forces they have to ask so they have to ask someone else for those resources and those personnel to be transferred to their command during a contingency uh and so this is problematic for the pla because it reduces unity of command it creates a system as uh george mentioned earlier uh in which uh critical support functions uh need to be uh transferred and so that creates the possibility of bureaucratic delays it creates the possibility of tensions and frictions between theater commanders who may want all sorts of resources at their disposal and central commanders who may not want to do that because those things need to be reserved for other contingencies that may happen at the same time and it also raises the question organizationally of who would actually be in charge of those joint logistics forces once they are transferred to theater commanders because in peacetime in normal steady state the theater commands have no uh level of command there's no one there who does joint logistics and so this is really a question of during wartime when you lead into a conflict whether it's over taiwan or anything else um how quick how efficient and how smooth that transition would be and how it would go uh currently pla logisticians uh haven't yet decided what the wartime model should even look like uh they have several different models they're wrestling with even uh each of which has different pros and cons but the debate that's underway in china sort of goes to show you that they themselves haven't really figured out what this transition is going to look like and how during wartime these joint logistics forces will actually be demanded and one other point before i wrap up here is that making things even worse for the pla is that operational commanders so theater commanders and their key deputies tend in their careers to have no logistics expertise so this is a bit unlike the us military in which commanders may occasionally serve a tour in a j4 or a logistics shop of some sort or at least have some kind of exposure to this discipline so that when they reach higher command they know how to task logistics units and they understand the basic doctrine but in the pla the career tracks are very stove-piped and so very few operational commanders have ever done a tour in any kind of logistics billet and so from the perspective of command overall command overall a sort of cohesion of joint operations in the pla this is a human element that could be uh somewhat of a weakness as the pla faces the uncertainties of battle and so finally sort of what does this mean for everyone else so this is problematic for the pla they are starting to try to coordinate things they are doing some training exercises involving the theaters and the joint logistics support force um but i would still regard this as something of a weakness or a disadvantage for the pla for the reasons i talked about earlier uh and so for other countries who are anticipating who are thinking about deterring china or thinking about operational concepts if things were ever to go into a crisis um the logistics system i think is something of a soft underbelly of the poa that could pose problems but also potentially opportunities uh for other countries whether it's the united states or a regional opponent of china and so that could range from things such as attrition highly attributing chinese forces and making it very difficult for them to be resupplied which is an issue that we saw in ukraine with the russians or things as sophisticated or complicated as uh non-kinetic or kinetic uh operations targeting the links that hold together china's uh centralized logistics uh system and so those are things that could be um in peace time to increase deterrence to make the pla really worry about its ability to sustain forces or things that could be employed during wartime to create operational problems for pla forces underway so with that let me stop there and yield to the real logic logistics experts josh and jr thanks thank you uh thank you joel and as joel mentioned we'll next turn to josh and jr i think josh will present first and then jr but they both worked on uh their paper together uh so josh over to you hi thanks buddy joel far from a logistics expert but uh we're really focused on the pla army and our paper was really designed to uh get after um you know that or tackle the easy task of outlining the massive number of changes and sustainment forces and capabilities made to an equally massive army so we first started by looking into the reorganization the army sustainment elements following the pla sports-wide 2016 strategic level and 2017 tactical level restructures this included researching numerous chinese journal articles uh discussing how the pla army thinks about logistics but also went a bit more in the weeds with counting trucks on cttv videos and observing how the pla was actually supporting its remote its most uh remotely garrisoned forces but a big focus for us was really on low level reorganizations the army made the new combined arms battalion its basic combat unit pushed down a permanent service support company in a medical platoon to the battalion in addition to the to new engineering signal reconstant splatoons combined arms battalion commanders now had organic access to vital support units like vehicle repair and rescue uh medical evacuation motor transport and supply platoons i know that sounds like a lot of uh mundane ground force peak but what it really translates to is enabling the battalion to potentially carry out small small-scale independent operations without heavy reliance on support from above these are kind of lessons learned from how the russians operate their battalion tactical groups they push a lot of stuff down to make it organic to chinese army commanders to make them better prepared to operate those forces in wartime but while having more organic support assets than its motorized infantry battalion pier and the russian army may seem like an edge the restructure also provided one staff officer to the battalion command team to oversee comprehensive support we look at this as a real significant weakness for china in contrast the us army typically has four to six personnel performing similar roles uh the next step up the new combined arms brigade also under what many changes it was given a service support battalion to consolidate all brigade echelon logistics and equipment support roles under one commander this allowed them to better enable task assignment of those assets down to combined arms battalions or across the brigade but it also allowed the brigade to keep those assets organized the same in both peacetime and wartime improving operational readiness to a certain extent um the brigade support department staff was also reorganized to kind of mirror higher echelon staffs which potentially would help streamline sustainment processes however those staff numbers are also pretty small at brigade levels so a few key takeaways from lower tactical echelon statement that will remain a challenge for plaa include medical support which while noted in pla writings as being more combat focus remains a primarily a rear area capability with minimal capacity for frontline support uh battalion repair platoons which are kind of new especially those in mechanized units are insufficient in size and experience to conduct battlefield salvage operations their higher their higher level brigade uh counterparts while better trained in various chassis repairs shoulder a heavier burden these days with a rapid increase in high-tech systems getting filled across a force that they're also responsible for uh much like the russian counterparts motor transport units of these tactical echelons are simply not enough although the chinese are fielding various types of new heavy equipment transporters and general purpose trucks these lower levels the number is still not sufficient for the long distance maneuver actions these brigades are expected to execute which leaves them heavily reliant on civilian support or even jlsf support as our friend dennis glasgow regularly points out these support elements at the brigade level have several contracts civilian cadres assigned to support military personnel although they often bring more technical know-how it remains unclear if they would perform their roles in a conflict or if their sudden absence would hamper brigade sustainment functions uh moving up a little bit higher to the group army or as we would roughly a u.s corps equivalent level and military district and theater army echelons there were additional changes made to the organization of the staffs up and down echelon like i mentioned before but also the forces that would provide layered approaches to medical equipment and supply support the group armies were each given their own hospital which is a new thing however there are some issues with making them combat focused when they're still heavily involved in the commercial business of civilian healthcare additional repair and transport capacity was placed on our new service support brigade although the unit's primary focus is on establishing a group army command post those sustainment battalions can support lower echelon units as their fire however they're not enough for large-scale combat operations leaving again heavy reliance on jlsf and civilian support military districts and some theater armies they have their own motor transport brigades that look very similar to jlsf motor transport brigades supply forces in the most you know complex board train of western southern china but command and control those might be a touchy subject later on for now i'll hand it over to jr to explain how the pla arm uses its reorganized logistics forces to carry out supply requests and fulfillments up and down echelon as well as discuss how the chinese view their own insufficient capabilities at different levels thanks thanks josh on paper ple ground force logistics are a joint enterprise harnessing the full advantages of large-scale sustainment feedback from pla logisticians suggests that additional refinement and investment is required to overcome long-standing limitations of pla supply in order to sustain ground forces in a maneuver conflict like that in ukraine conceptualizing ground force supply and distribution plaa academics describe three echelons strategic level predominantly consisting of large-scale suppliers and warehouses campaign level roughly theater command and service level entities and tactical level for logistics and group armies and below we're primarily concerned with a campaign and tactical levels pla and pla logisticians envision a logistics system where tactical units transmit requirements up to the group army or brigade level and then these requests are sent to theater command service and or joint offices for campaign level planning tasking and fulfillment interestingly the pla has different reporting channels in peace and wartime during peacetime tactile units liaise directly with lower level service and joint entities in wartime however the requests are all consolidated the highest logistics office in the theater command to in the pla's words ensure the theater most effectively utilizes its logistics capacity by centralizing requests during a dynamic maneuver conflict like ukraine centralizing logistics command and control may not facilitate the dynamic decision making needed to keep units supplied transitioning from ground logistics command and control to distribution processes pla texts detail four methods of supply distribution we'll discuss three below the strategic level the first method is the independent method whereby campaign level entities supply tactical level units and then tactical units internally complete sustainment requirements the second a slight adjustment to the standard independent model is the direct method where campaign level entities directly provide goods to lower level tactical units bypassing group armies and potentially other tactical levels method 3 the military civilian joint method which is intended for both peace and wartime integrates local logistics firms like dongjing or sf express to distribute goods from campaign level sites to tactical units the first and second methods are conventional military logistics operations but how effective civilian logistics firms will execute method 3 in a war zone is unknown pivoting from logistics organizations and processes pla observers note myriad shortfalls and post-reform logistics that mirror similar problems russian forces reportedly have faced in ukraine first commentators frequently note that logistics command and control processes remain incomplete or convoluted for example movement requests sometimes require five or six layers of approval drawing criticism from pla logistics planners second authors criticize the plaa for overwhelmingly seeing highways and railroads as the primary form of projection for land units although air and sea movement are included in some exercises the so-called railroad transport and motor movement method remains the standard which is seen as a so-called peacetime transport organization that pla observers believe does not satisfy the requirements of real combat lastly pla logisticians complain of a lack of equipment and capability which has been previously discussed by others joel and josh examples include the pla's ratio of heavy equipment as heavy equipment transporters pets to track vehicles being one to 18 which is far below the u.s proportion of one to seven another as discussed is containerization which despite its widespread use commercially is not consistently utilized at the brigade level and below in conclusion tremendous changes occurred in pla logistics after the below the neck performs in april 2017. the diffusion of logistical support provides lower level community with additional resources the pla continues to work through issues done by reforms and legacy pla logistics challenge determining the actual capability of the pla is always difficult but plea writing suggests that pla ground force logistics would be challenged to effectively support dynamic large-scale ground operations in its current state uh thank you for your time and attention and i'll turn it back over to bonnie thank you thank you both josh and jr let me turn down the floor to lonnie to uh for your thoughts on overall the key highlights from the conference but also helping us to sort of tie it all together so lonnie over to you thanks bonnie um my role in the conference was to step back from the details that were laid out very effectively in the various papers and think about the overall state of the field how well do we really understand pla logistics and in particular how well can we answer the most important questions about the pla that are logistics related questions um and my my my overall message was that we made a lot of progress but we still cannot address the hard question we can't answer the hard questions um let me lay out those questions for you um the first couple of questions surround a a potential major conflict between china and taiwan and china and the united states over taiwan first big question can the pla sus logistics force project the combat force across the strait and sustain it in combat operations on taiwan how much capacity do they have for for legit logistics power projection at that relatively short range of roughly 100 to 150 miles off the chinese coast um the pla's very large effort to supplement military logistics with civilian mobilized uh assets but there's a lot more to be done on that we still cannot answer the question of can the pla really get its forces across and if it gets them across can it sustain them in combat on the island closely related can the air forces in particular sustain the long fight as we've all been reminded uh by er by ukraine the things that we should have always had in mind after afghanistan and iraq and many other recent conflicts you may think it's going to be a short war but it can turn out to be a very long war indeed if you're not prepared to fight the long war then you're not prepared for the war and i i have particularly uh i have particular questions about the pla air forces and naval aviation's ability to sustain high-intensity large-scale combat operations over long periods of time can the maintenance forces turn the planes around day after day after day and get them back in the air can do they have enough engines how much how long can they use an engine between between have to pull up pull the engines for overhauls uh how many spare engines do they have on hand for overhauls how many overhauls can they do at a time i personally suspect that the pla air force can only sustain combat operations for about two weeks but we really can't answer that question because we don't have the data and we haven't had the focus on those questions that we need in order to develop the data uh closely related how resilient are pla logistics operations you know somebody's going to be shooting back can the pla logistics apparatus sustain enemy attack and continue to function effectively close to china as in taiwan and even more of an issue farther from china such as in the south china sea or potential crises farther afield fourth big question um it is clear now that the pla does not have the capability to project large-scale combat forces far from china they they could not fight a war in the indian ocean they could not fight a war in the middle east or africa do they aspire to those capabilities in the future are they trying to build the power projection logistics structure never mind the power projection uh you know command and control structures and intelligence structures and so forth can but for our purposes are they do they even want to be able to do what we did in you know to project large combat forces halfway around the world and fight a major war against a a sizable opponent final big question if there is a light major war between china and japan and china and taiwan either case with u.s involvement it's highly likely that china will be cut off from trade with the outside world or for most of the outside world for at least the duration of the conflict and possibly for some time thereafter how resilient is china itself to that kind of cut off how well could china endure a long-term effective blockade whether it's actual military blockade operation or not the result is the same china will not have very much contact with the outside world how well can china continue to sustain military operations in those conditions so we can't answer any of these questions so i greatly applaud the progress we've made in studying pla logistics but we're not where we need to be in this area yet we cannot yet do what our customers are our interested audience needed for us to do which is tell you whether the pla can actually fight the long war against a major opponent so um that was my not very cheerful conclusion thank you thank you lonnie i i think uh there are many points that you raise that we want to address but before that and before i go into more detail q a i saw a number of questions in the um in the chat box with folks asking when will the papers be out so george if i could turn to you i'm somewhere asking when the paper would be out is there going to be a physical copy what do you have a sense of the timeline yeah no that's a good question so i as i said at the outset i i anticipate having the volume of all the papers including a write-up of lonnie's assessment and one additional chapter that was provided later after the conference to pull a few things together i anticipate having that all out and published as i said a little bit later this year in the fall time frame it's hard for me to give an exact date because of the publishing queue here at the war college but but i think fall is realistic uh it'll be available for download as a pdf from the war college website our press website um hard copies we tend in the modern digital age we tend not to do too many print copies uh those that we do we tend to reserve for you know military and government recipients uh it is possible for the general public to order hard copies through the government printing office that that connection does exist but they won't be made widely available in print form for circulation the main way that the general public will be able to access it will be as a pdf download but it will be freely available to anybody that would visit the website thank you very much george so i'd like to now turn to the broader q a and i actually want to go back to a question that mommy pointed out as a question we can't quite answer right now but i do want to see if maybe lani joel and others might want to weigh in so we know that a chinese amphibious invasion of taiwan is incredibly complex how would you assess right now how prepared is the pla logistically for such an operation so allow me maybe you first joel and then to george if you want to weigh into well this is a matter of great debate among the pla watching community and the debate centers around uh the apparently inadequate force structure of pla navy amphibious lift vehicles ships if you wanted to run this operation the way a u.s military planner would run the operation then the pla navy doesn't have nearly enough amphibious lift capacity to do it i wrote a paper for the navy war college uh last year making the argument that um i don't think that's how the pla envisions running this operation i think that they envision military lift for the the assault echelons and then turning to a heavy reliance on mobilized civilian shipping capacity to get the rest of the force ashore and for the entire sustainment portion of this and that of course depends upon successfully capturing and operating ports on the western coast of taiwan and it's not guaranteed by any means that they could could do that but my contention is that they that that's how they think about fighting this war and that they have done a lot to prepare for that model of a crosstrait lift there's a lot of people who disagree with me on that thank you honey joel so as aslania said there's been a lot of papers written recently about the issue of lyft things that can be counted we have in our forthcoming volume at ndu on crosstrade operations yet another contribution to this making the point that military sealift and airlift are both insufficient and aslani mentioned they're trying to think through creative ways to make up for those shortfalls without necessarily just simply producing a whole lot of extra great whole ships and airplanes but beyond this there's also the question of other kinds of material that they may need to stockpile for either a short or a protracted conflict um and i don't have a good answer to this but i would channel some poa logistics writings in which you get the sense reading these things that the anticipated material requirements are really quite prodigious are really huge uh so things such as a number of hospital beds that you might need things like just the amount of oil that you would need to have on hand according to poa analysts in their logistics community who look who have looked at this in great depth and specific in the context of the cross rate operations just have these you know astronomical figures because in part because they're anticipating very high levels of attrition and so these are things that can be counted i think you know the other layer to this are sort of the intangibles how well-prepared do they sense that their logisticians are how well prepared are their uh troops how you know well do they you know consider the quality of the training and the joint training in which logistics has to be merged into these other kinds of operations and so you know here you know i suspect there's also concerns and doubts in the pla about their ability to do this not only in peace time but in the exigencies of battle um and also kind of the final point would be the lessons they may be uh driving from russia's weaknesses in ukraine which have uh you know underscored kind of a hubris in russia and really severe limitations when faced with an opponent that is blowing up bridges and targeting you know logistic supply chains that are overextended and so on uh but what exactly is the pla inferring from this for a cross straight which is different in many ways similar in others um but you know is this actually further undermining their own confidence in their ability to perform these very difficult tasks that's an open question in which i don't think there is data yet to analyze thank you joel very comprehensive answer uh george anything else you wanted to add uh just just briefly that you know the question of will is comes into play here we there's been a lot of commentary in the context of the russian ukraine conflict about you know the will to continue to to fight and uh and to resist and so uh you know the pla today can conduct a mill could conduct a military operation against taiwan to put pressure on the taiwan government be that through uh sorties be that missile strikes etc air sorties et cetera um but is that pressure enough to get to defeat the will of the taiwan government to get capitulate and submit to the prc's will um it's so incredibly difficult to answer that question because at the same time that we're assessing the pla's sustainment challenges taiwan government and uh armed forces will be facing many similar sustainment issues you know the island has to be supplied with its own goods to sustain its own fight and that's that adds another huge variable into the already tremendously complicated uh calculus of trying to assess what the pla is going to be effective you could ask all the same questions uh for the time on defense forces as well so um i i like to think that uh if if taiwan is determined uh to uh to resist a pla military operation that it would take today it would take more than the pla has to defeat taiwan's will but that's very much a a question of of you know what's up in the head as much as it is what's on the ground what do you have on hand thank you george so i see a couple of questions as well some of the questions submitted beforehand um going back to the original uh event title which is understanding the pla logistics compared to problems that russia faces so maybe i could turn to um josh and jr to offer their initial thoughts do you think that the pla suffer the same logistic problems as russia particularly since the two militaries have learned from each other and if i could add on to it that to what extent has the pla learned from russia in terms of logistics go ahead j.r okay perfect i'll hop in uh first bonnie to to address your learning comment uh the pla is always watching and learning from other people's conflicts no matter how big or small obviously we can all assume that they are intently watching the russian ukraine scenario to learn and look and see how you know big ground force one after which they model themselves uh in some part performs so so they're definitely watching um but fairly early in the game i don't know if we've seen yet uh lots of exactly what what uh observers pla observers are thinking as far as how you know maybe some some challenges russia is having in ukraine might befall the pla we've already talked about uh containerization and palletization of equipment it's extremely hard to get things on and off trucks it's much easier to do if they're in you know in a huge container and i have a forklift if i'm unloading all those things by hand which from my understanding a lot of russian unions are having to do you add a lot of time you make yourself a big target et cetera and that's something that pla logistics writers talk about um is a lack of containerization in lower level units additionally and joel hit on this but there were pla authors writing about a lack of stockpiling and a lack of pre-positioning um in in the details weren't exact but apparently you know a pla logistician thought it would be worth writing a paper on pre-positioning so we makes one wonder how how much the ple is doing it and lastly just this uh uh kind of being forced to stay on roads and railways make yourselves a big target and and those you know large static places can also be easily disruptive so um josh i don't know what else you want to add on there so i won't i agree with everything that jay are saying as far as the the processes and stuff go but uh the pla is also you know learning from the us as far as forced modernization to not have to deal with the types of issues that they're seeing uh russia you know deal with a lot of uh universal chassis being fielded across medium and light brigades give them a wide range of unit capabilities that field all types of systems whether it be firepower or electronic warfare or logistics or even combat systems but that are way more sustainable so instead of uh improving their logistics a lot of ways they're actually just making their forces at least newer forces easier to sustain so that way if uh you know combined arts battalions built out of eight by eight or you know vehicles are all going in they're all gonna be using the same chassis for the most part now this doesn't really apply to the heavy combined arms brigades that pla has because uh those who have the same issues that any heavy unit would have the u.s russia whatever but um other systems i mean it's this is what they're doing instead of improving processes for the most part they're just making things easier to stay great thank you uh so we have a lot of questions and uh in the uh the chat so i don't think we'll be able to address them but let me group a couple of them together several of them seem to be responding to lonnie's comment and asking about how capable or how whether the pla is able to engage in a protracted conflict so lonnie i don't know if you want to win if others want to weigh in on that question i think it's a little bit different than just logistics and statements but um lonnie maybe turn to you first and see if any others want to weigh in here well i'll expand on the sort of air air battle as an example i talked about the challenge to the logistics force of turning the aircraft around you know day after day after day for weeks and months of conflict yeah that's sustaining a long large high-intensity air war is the hardest thing logistics air logistics guys can do but it's also hard for other for other parts of the force structure um just personnel management you you you can most people most air forces find that you can turn around planes faster than you can turn around pilots and so you if you're going to sustain high intensity operations you've got to be be managing your pilot rest hours and have a large enough pool of pilots to be rotating them into the operation and out that's that's very hard it's also extremely hard on the intelligence and targeting force structure it's one thing to launch your force to to attack a bunch of pre-planned targets that you've been looking at for 10 years and you know what you know that first the first two days of the air war you've got your target folders sitting there but beyond that it's an ongoing dynamic process of assessing the results of the previous uh the previous days or a couple of days of battle seeing which of your targets are still active and still need to be re-serviced building new target folders for a rapidly changing situation this is an enormous task that the entire pla air force has never done they have never had to conduct an air operation longer than a couple of days in some of their larger uh air force exercises and they've never had to conduct an operation that goes beyond their pre-planned targeted target deck and i just don't think until you do that you don't understand how hard it really is great thank you joel did you want to weigh into it just just briefly i think just to kind of step back on the question and it's it's about how how well prepared the poli is for a protracted uh conflict um you know i think there's there seems to be a predisposition uh among you know sort of poa doctrinal thinkers that you know you're gonna get into a conflict that can be that can be a high intensity but short duration uh conflict and you know in part because that's kind of what they want to prepare to do in part because some of the examples they have looked at such as you know the falklands or others have been relatively short duration and so you know you have for example sort of conceptual writings about what an island landing campaign would look like in which you have this extensive mobilization and then a very kind of brief preparatory and assault phase and then sort of the thinking kind of trails off you know sort of the resistance will just sort of melt away once we decapitate the regime not necessarily as much thinking about what things could look like on d-day plus you know two months or something like this when you're still mired in a in a very difficult situation not only needing to you know sustain your forces but also just needing to continue operations um you know and so the question i think is you know when you look at things like their counter insurgency training i think you see some improvements over the years uh in you know urban warfare counter insurgency types of trainings but i think the real one of the real clues will be when they uh next revise their operational doctrine and it seems like they're kind of at the leading edge of doing this um but whether or not and how the russian conflict plays into the process of updating the document whether they assume well there's a branch in which we don't succeed on d-day plus one and we have to continue to fight much longer um you know whether that really gets instilled into their doctrine and ultimately their training and their capabilities that's the i think that's one of the key questions that we will continue to monitor thank you joel i just want to know i saw two of our guests raise your hands uh wait i actually can't call you so if you have questions please type them in the chat so i want to give a couple other questions there seems to be a number of questions on the role of civilians in pla logistics and there's also one question on the role of humans versus uh i guess artificial intelligence so uh who uh maybe i could turn to see if uh either josh or jr want to weigh in on any of those issues sure as mentioned we are seeing a lot more uh civilian cadre get integrated into the support elements of pla army specifically up and down echelon um we we think that they're uh they're bringing a lot of uh i don't know no technical know-how but again they're wearing uniforms and uh but what what they're actually something what they're gonna do in a time of war is is a is a gap to us right um but that's just the the military um based civilians we are seeing this the civilian military integration that you know we always talk about um playing a role across the board and a heavy reliance on it so whether it be you know supplying forces near the border or even going over borders it's going to be moving units requires a whole lot of lift that the pili army just does not have and i say lyft i mean you know land-based so heavy equipment transporters trains etc so there's a heavy reliance on those civilian agencies and and now a reliance on the jlsf to coordinate those functions we saw a movement to reorganize some of those staff departments to help support staff departments to uh to help uh put new offices in there that would be better integrated with the civilian agencies we've seen it in action it's especially out in xinjiang along the the western you know the furthest west but again for uh protracted warfare uh this is one of those ones i'll just touch back on this the chinese right now and they're very clear in their own writings they're not prepared for moving beyond the border at this point in time at least rail lines we're talking about rail gauges and everything too their support system is designed to rely on civilians to get to where they need to be within the country but anywhere beyond that becomes problematic jrd anything you want to add i'll just add from uh from my research that there as josh handed a lot of issues with the pla working with local commercial firms things like personnel on having enough experience or knowledge limited coordination mechanisms and my personal favorite was the stubborn insistence of commercial firms to make a profit so you know pla units at all levels are trying to make those connections uh but not not even in peacetime they're having issues with execution so when the bullets start flying it just adds a whole another level of complexity [Music] thank you so let me let me turn to you but uh george i'll turn to you last to help wrap up the panel since we're running up on our time just wanted to say briefly that the china has an enormous apparatus to mobilize civilian resources to support military operations and this seems not to be a stop gap measure because the pla logistics system is not yet good enough it seems instead to be how the chinese feel that they should fight this war to to rely upon the enormous resources of the world's second largest economy as a component of china's military power but uh as josh said there are njr both there are many questions as to how well that will work but it won't fail for lack of organizational effort that's what i'll say actually george if you don't mind let me answer one more quick question before turning to help wrap this up so one of the questions uh that i just saw come in was how visible would we see chinese logistic preparations if it was ready to use significant military force whether that's against taiwan or any of its neighbors would we have clear advanced notice indications or would that be a bit more difficult for us to see so whoever wants to weigh in on this question uh okay so you know uh this is this is always one of those touchy ones that uh you know how often they're gonna broadcast you know exercises and training events that would include you know uh large-scale mobilization of their logistics forces or integration of jlsf with other services to prepare for large-scale combat operations it's how willing are they to uh to broadcast that to the open public that's a difficult one to to assess um but uh maybe i don't wanna throw us to joel but joel if you have any idea about the jlsf stuff that might be a good iw yeah i mean just just briefly uh the the easiest observable would be productions of ships and airplanes that are relevant to transporting uh troops and we can see that they're you know launching new type zero seven fives or type zero seven ones et cetera um y20s and so things that can be counted and that they will uh they will release some but you know again even if you can get on to that there's this entire intangible layer that's not only matters of training and human capital but of internal perceptions about how good you are and so even if you have all the stuff do you believe that it's reliable do you believe that it's maintainable do you believe that your people are able to uh to address problems when they occur and so on and that i think is really one of the critical things that we as outside observers will never have a good lens on if it appears it's in chinese media and design for political purposes but what do they really believe about their own capacity that i think you know could be very consequential but you know very very difficult to to to to grasp to quantify thank you so at the end of time let me just turn it to george for any final closing comments you have particularly since you were the main organizer for the conference yeah thanks again bonnie and thanks to all the authors uh those were able to join us today and others who weren't um it was a it was a great event and we really appreciate the support from so many different agencies and organizations to make it happen as a closing thought i'll just say um you know if we look at if we look at the way the conflict in ukraine has unfolded to date uh i i think most observers would say that you know russia made the decision to go in to ukraine and it's gonna it would it would take a lot to throw them off of that and and to have them reverse course once they made the decision to commit they were going to commit until they achieved their objectives uh we've seen a lot of rhetoric uh surrounding that issue in the ukraine war um so initially when russia tried some operations that that maybe it wasn't that well suited to at least historically anyway in terms of you know longer uh longer range operations trying to do more kind of a lightning strike decapitation perhaps uh in the keeve and a couple of supporting places and that didn't work out for them and they they had something to fall back on and what they've fallen back on now is a pattern of operations they're very comfortable with historically and arguably their force is better uh better structured for uh that kind of grinding using a lot of fires and making intermittent incremental gains over time and they they seem like they're relatively better uh able to sustain that why do i mention all that in the context of china the pla attempting to conduct an operation say against taiwan or another adversary they probably i think a lot of people would agree that china will have also made the very tough decision to commit to that operation no matter what they're going to be very very committed to it but what i worry about a little bit is because china's modern military experience bla's modern military experience is relatively limited compared to that of russia yes you know the invasion into vietnam the 70s the korean war in the 50s but what does the pla have to fall back on if in the first few days or few weeks their initial operations don't work well i'm not sure that the even the pla knows what it's it's you know style of fighting ought to be its mode of operations ought to be that they can comfortably fall back on and continue to prosecute operations they write an awful lot about what that is uh you know intelligent eyes warfare covering all the debate don't know all the domains etc but you know kind of going back to my opening remarks they just really haven't had the opportunity to actually build experience conducting those against an actual adversary and so again if the pla stumbles early on it'll be i don't interesting as such a an uh insufficient word it'll be very challenging to ki i think uh to understand where china goes from there because they will have made such a deep you know kind of a emotional personal commitment to achieving their objectives that it you know it could have i think profound effects on the security of the region so i don't know if that helps a lot but that's kind of something that i was thinking about in terms of uh in terms of the context of the russian ukraine war and what china may be taking away from it but again thanks to csis and yubani for for doing this panel thank you george and thank you everyone for joining us my apologies that were four minutes over but i hope that was a very productive discussion for those of us um those who want more information like this will be posted online so i believe it will be a day or two but if you want to revisit any portion it will be online and as george mentioned the papers will also be out later this year so thank you again for everyone and thank you for joining us [Music] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 45,702

Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics, China, Russia, PLA, Military, Military Logistics

Id: WCrQvQZ3i8g

Length: 63min 37sec (3817 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022