Spadex 716
Spadex 716

@Spadex716i

37 Tweets 22 reads May 28, 2023
Detailed #Thread || The evolution of chinese PLA Tactics and structure over the years. [1/35]
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The PLA have evolved from a labour's force to a modernized one, They are targeting to become the most powerful by 2049.
This thread will explore it's evolution
Context :-
Many people failed to understand that PLA is not a nation's force who are made to fight for country's constitution and people.
The PLA was made for a sole purpose of serving a political party and it's chairman.
PLA's operations, motivation and structure is guided by chinese communist party. This is called “CCP military guiding theory” [党的军事指导理论]
A system Where the party systematic thinks about warfare & national defense issues and The PLA incorporat their thoughts and change accordingly.
Basically The CCP guides the PLA hence the name.
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⛩️ Now let's start the #Thread
The initial PLA was structured and tasked to fight a "total war" which was aimed at defeating the enemy capacity to fight and invade it's territories. It involves "Large scale warfare" and "mass destruction"
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Inorder to fight such conflict, the PLA comes with the concept of "people war".
Here's a short story on how they came up with this concept
Year 1949 :
The world war II left china as a penniless country with a huge poor population.
Each chinese family Used to have 7-10 children on an average during those days
Because of this imbalance, the human life becomes cheap.
This was reflected in the tactics of PLA of that time in the form of their wave strategies and "single-use soldiers,” concept
Human wave tactics involve soldiers conducting direct attacks in large numbers with the objective of overwhelming an opposing force
These attack are concentrates at a very narrow front. Each wave is timed and spaced in such a way that would make the defenders' fires ineffective
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They will keep attacking the same spot without pausing and the defenders would be eventually weakened (because of casualties or lacking of ammo)
To the defenders on the spot, they see "waves after waves" of PLA soldiers coming their way.
The only downside of this tactic is high casualties that's why troops taking part in such attacks are called "single use troops"
Year 1950, The chinese korean war
The chinese human wave attack was first used in Korea against South Korea supported by United States and allied countries.
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western army relays on heavy fire power but they lack in manpower hence they can be overwhelmed with a large force
There are recorded instance of soldier's rifle barrel melting down after turning red due to continues firing against seemingly endless expendable chinese troops
♠ Year 1962 india china war :
The use of human wave tactics was seen again this time Against India where hundreds of chinese soldiers were fighting few dozen indians for each post and bunkers
Battle of Rezang La is one prime example of this
Yr 1970s, The sino Vietnamese war
The chinese success of human wave tactics come to an abrupt end after they were butchered in sino vietnam war.
The Vietnamese knew chinese better than anyone.
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The Vietnamese gave the chinese way, they let them come deep in and then attack the exausted chinese troops with devestating fire power causing unimaginable casualties to chinese side
Over the time, the number of casualties became unacceptable for chinese. This experience force the chinese to modernized.
[18/35] ⛩️ :
After 1980s the thinking of CCP shifted away from the concept of "total war".
They now directed their military to prepare to conduct "Local war", emphasizing speed mobility and lethality rather than manpower
Unlike total war which involves large manuverber elements, the local war was a controlled use of military to achieve a strategic goal in a local theater.
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As a consequence, this period saw the most dramatic troop cut in the history of PLA
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♠ 1989 : fall of USSR
With the dissolution of Soviet union the threat from the northern border vanished and while the southern border with India was peaceful. China shifted all its focus in the eastern border with Taiwan.
YEAR 1991 GULF WAR : The birth of modern day PLA
This war brings harbinger of change for the PLA as In just 42 days, The USA Was able eviscerated the Iraqi military which are very similar in structure to PLA by using precision strike plateform and information based ops
Beijing realized its military was ill-prepared to face a modern foe like the United States and act accordingly.
A new concept called " local war under informatized condition" was born.
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The PLA prioritised developing of capabilities and concept of joint campaign encompassing sea, air, space, land & cyber arises
They were sold on the idea that information will the most important role in today's warfare.
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25/35:
Most people have a very vague idea of information warfare
In the most layman term, information warfare means gaining enemy info, making offensive plans using that information and
destroying enemy's information systems by disrupting their information flow.
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Many people interchange propaganda warfare with info warfare which is not true but propaganda do plays a major role in PLA strategy.
Let me take a quick detour from the thread and talk about chinese propaganda machinery.
China heavenly rely on propaganda to divide the enemy into factions and gain sympathy from their own population.
In order to achieve this, they use a
“Three Warfares strategy”: it includes public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.
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The objective of the 3 Warfares is to control public opinion, organize psychological offense and
defense, engage in legal struggle, and fight for popular will and public opinion.
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Shaping a postive Public opening of it self is priority of chinese military as it's image directly affect the image of political party in power i.e Chinese communist party.
PLA is a private army of CCP Afterall
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This is the only reason why they haven't declared the true casualties count of their soldiers from galwan incident
PLA have a large force dedicated to do propaganda only
In summary. The PLA have evolved from fighting a total war with large manpower to a local war with technology
This thread is getting way to long.
Last 5 tweets of this thread will come tomorrow 😛
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@ShivAroor @Kyangs_Thang @FinestYew
Sir a thread on how 🇨🇳 PLA evolved as a force. Do give it a read !! Thanks

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