BEIJING: In late July, Chinese President Xi Jinping underscored theimportance of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) developing itsdrone warfare capacity to add to the PLAAF’s fleet of “advanced aircraft”.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) remains “the largestaviation forces in the region” and the third biggest in the world, thePentagon revealed in a recently released report on China’s military power.
“The PLAAF is rapidly catching up to Western air forces across a broadrange of capabilities and competencies”, the report claimed, referring tothe Chinese Air Force’s “2,500 total aircraft and approximately 2,000”combat planes.
In this vein, the survey also singled out China’s alleged efforts to expandits military influence across East Asia and the globe with the help of itsnavy, which the report said is now “the largest in the world, with anoverall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines includingover 130 major surface combatants”.
The report described the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as the world’slargest standing ground force, which “continued to transition into amodern, mobile, and lethal ground force” last year.
According to the document, 2019 saw the PLA “fielding upgraded combatsystems and communications equipment and enhancing its ability to conductand manage complex combined-arms and joint operations”.
Referring to the Pentagon’s 2020 China Military Power report, Kris Osborn,defence editor at the magazine The National Interest, noted in an articlepublished by Fox News on Sunday that the US is not only concerned about thesize of the PLAAF but “the increasing technical sophistication andmulti-mission tactics with which it operates”.
He recalled that “as part of its discussion of Chinese airpower”, thereport mentioned the Chinese military operating sophisticated Russian-builtS-400 air defence systems.
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Chinese President Urges PLAAF to Strengthen Drone Warfare Capacity
The comments came after Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed theimportance of developing unmanned aerial vehicles as part of the PLAAFwhich he said “already has advanced aircraft and air defence weapons”.
“Drones are profoundly changing war scenarios. It is necessary tostrengthen drone combat research, education, and training, and acceleratethe training of drone pilots and commanders”, Xi told students at the PLAAir Force Aviation University in Changchun, Jilin Province.
This followed the US Defence Intelligence Agency releasing its annualreport on Chinese military power in 2019, revealing that the PLAAF “isdeveloping new medium- and long-range stealth bombers” capable of striking“regional and global targets”.
The document added that Beijing’s continued efforts to modernise its navywere “closing the gap with Western air forces across a broad spectrum ofcapabilities, such as aircraft performance, […] and electronic warfare”.
