Abstract

If mainland China uses force against Taiwan, whether its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can “fight a quick battle to achieve quick results” to prevent against intervention by major military powers and possible chain reactions is of critical importance. One of the elements of “a quick battle with quick results” is for the PLA to precisely project within the shortest time possible a significant number of whole-unit troops and large amounts of materiel from all parts of the mainland to Taiwan proper and surrounding theaters of operations.

However, in a campaign against Taiwan, the PLA will deploy a huge number of troops and the scale of the war, its extent and intensify, and the materiel consumed will be enormous. Strategic delivery for such a campaign will be more difficult than any similar or same missions the PLA had ever executed up to now. The PLA originally expected its strategic delivery capability to reach by 2020, after the completion of this most recent round of military reform, the level required for an invasion of Taiwan. As a matter of fact, there is still considerable room for the PLA to improve in “delivery power,” “ground infrastructure,” and “informatization and development of a strategic delivery system.” Likewise, “joint sea-air delivery training” and “protection for strategic delivery” need to be greatly improved as well.

To acquire strategic delivery capability adequate for an invasion of Taiwan as early as possible, the PLA took measures like “Enhancing Delivery Forces” and “Perfecting the Delivery System” in 2011. After the most recent military reform formally kicked off in 2015, the PLA began to focus on “establishing an integrated joint delivery command system,” “civil-military integration,” “planning and launching joint delivery drills,” “strengthening Eastern Theater Command’s execution capacity” and others. In our estimation, the focus in the future will be on “raising the level of informatization,” “beefing up protection for strategic delivery,” “planning and launching realistic sea-air delivery drills,” “perfecting relevant laws and regulations and technical standards,” and “reinforcing the strategic channel in the East China Sea Direction.” The aim is to improve overall strategic delivery capability.

Keywords: strategic delivery, PLA reform, joint attack operations against a big island, civil-military integration