ROC kudos of the day:500 veterans hold parade to show how it's done

500 veterans hold parade to show how it's done
By Joseph Yeh, The China Post
June 13, 2016, 12:36 am TWN
       
       
        http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2016/06/13/469151/500-veterans.htm
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Around 500 retired military personnel held a parade in front of the Presidential Office on Sunday as part of a campaign launched after a video clip was released showing a poorly executed parade by incumbent military police trainees.

Featuring 500 retired military personnel over the age of 50, mostly veterans of the R.O.C. Army, the parade was held at Ketagalan Boulevard around 9 a.m.

Goose-stepping in parade formation, the veterans sang military songs and the R.O.C. national anthem, in a move organizers said was intended to "rekindle patriotism and call on citizens to support national defense," in front of thousands of spectators.

Henry Ho (何啟聖), initiator and spokesperson of the campaign, told reporters that the parade was held in an attempt "to send positive energy to Taiwan society."

The campaign was initially launched after many veterans saw a video clip of a poorly executed parade by Military Police trainees this February.

In the clip, most trainees were unable to synchronize their movements as per training expectations.

Following the release of the video, many have criticized the R.O.C. Military Police for a lack of discipline and proper training. The Military Police are considered to be one of the most elite groups within the nation's Armed Forces.

The Military Police Command decided to replace the head of its training center, after the Jan. 4 video taken at a training center in New Taipei's Wugu District was released.

The Ministry of National Defense (MND) explained that that the poor performance visible on the video clip has "damaged the image of the nation's Armed Forces."

Angered by the poor performance of these trainees, Ho decided to form a Facebook page calling for veterans to participate in a parade of their own to show Military Police trainees what a parade "is supposed to" look like.

According to Ho, thousands of veterans expressed interest in participating in the parade less than a week after he created the page.

Chou Chih Hsiang (周志祥), who was in charge of training veterans for the Sunday parade, said he was proud of the retired soldiers, since it only took them several weeks of training to prepare for the event.

The organizers said veterans came together from across the country and were trained for seven weeks.

Many of these retired soldiers participated in military parades in front of the Presidential Office during the 1980s to 1990s.

Both Ho and Chou, however, refused to comment on the recent incident when a pro-Taiwan independence individual verbally abused veterans by calling them "Chinese refugees" and demanding they go back to China.

More than 1,000 spectators attended Sunday's event, including former first lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青) and Kuomintang (KMT) chairperson Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱).

MND's Praise


　　Meanwhile, in a statement, the MND praised the civilian-initiated parade, saying that the veterans made a move to safeguard the dignity and honor of the R.O.C Armed Forces, and that their efforts can serve as an example for incumbent military personnel.

14th Amphibious Armored Brigade, 31st Group Army, East Theater Command

The 14th conducted a brigade size, live fire, amphibious assault drill last week.  No big deal, that is what they do.  Besides, according to United States Army war College's 2015 study "The Chinese People's Liberation Army in 2025"  (link here)

"Strategic sealift beyond Taiwan is quite limited. China has never possessed a robust capability to transport and land troops under combat  conditions"  (page 217)

Global Security also chimed in on the sealift question  (link here)

First among these limitations is the capability to transport and sustain more than one division of ground troops and equipment by sea or air, according to the US DOD report to Congress on China's military [down from three four decades earlier]. The PLA Navy’s total amphibious lift capacity was estimated in 2009 to be one infantry division of approximately 10,000 troops and equipment at one time.

Or as Patrick Tyler correctly pointed out in his NYT article (link here)

If China has learned anything in decades of conflict with Taiwan, it is that an all-out invasion of Taiwan is well beyond its capabilities. The joke commonly heard among Western military experts is that a Chinese assault on Taiwan would have to be called ''the million man swim.'' 

To perform this historic "million man swim"  the PLA could call up their two Marine Brigades, two Amphibious Mech Infantry Divisions (the 1st of the 1st Group Army, and the 124th of the 42nd Group Army) and every unit of the 1st, 12th, 31st, 41st and 42nd Group Army of the East Theater Command.  No worries, they will be dressed up but with no boat to go.

Click on the vid below to see the amphibious assault drill

PLAN decommission of the day: Type051D "Nanchang" DDG163

DDG163 is the second PLAN ship to bear the name "Nanchang."  She was commissioned November 5th 1982 and now undergoing mothballing to be a tourist destination at its namesake city.  Public opening is second half of 2017.  With DDG163 gone,  The PLAN now has a total of 6 active Ludas remaining, down from 17 during its peak

Of course, the first PLAN Nanchang is much more famous. She started as HMS Aurora, an Arethusa-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy that was sold to the Chinese Nationalist Navy in May 1948.  She was renamed as the "ChungKing 重慶" so to serve as Nationalist's flagship.  Her crew defected to the PLAN in Feb 1949 and handed the ship over in due course.

RIP Corporal Cheng Junhui

Corporal Cheng Junhui dies in demining mission along China-Vietnam boarder
Source: China Military OnlineEditor: Zhang Tao
2016-06-07 18:080

File photo of Corporal Cheng Junhui

File photo shows Corporal Cheng Junhui (left) is ready for a demining operation.

BEIJING, June 7 (ChinaMil) – Corporal Cheng Junhui with the Unit 3 under the Demining Command of the PLA Yunnan Military Command (MC) died in the third large scale demining operation along the China-Vietnam boarder on June 4, 2016.

Cheng was recognized as martyr and was awarded second-class merit citation by the Yunnan MC.

Officers and soldiers with Unit 3 were conducting missions in a minefield with a slope of over 60 degrees on the afternoon of June 4. While, Cheng Junhui took the initiative to search the most dangerous section.

When Cheng was removing the fuse of a mine, the mountain suddenly collapsed and he rolled down to a valley 30 meters deep. Cheng was rescued and rushed to hospital immediately.




Unfortunately, Cheng died of his injuries at 22:00 at the age of 22.

Cheng Junhui is from Chongqing of China. He joined the PLA 14th Group Army in December 2012 and joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in August 2014. He started to act as deputy squad leader in the end of 2014.

Cheng became a demining soldier of the PLA Yunnan MC after the deployment of demining tasks in Yunnan section of the China-Vietnam boarder in June, 2015.

The third large scale demining mission along the China-Vietnam border officially started in November 2015. Cheng Junhui and over 400 Chinese soldiers have risked their lives performing demining tasks in Chinese territory. Cheng was always fighting in the most dangerous places during those missions.

Up to now, the Chinese officers and soldiers have cleared a mined area of 14 square kilometers and demined nearly 30,000 of all types of explosives.

Saturday, June 04, 2016

Non-headline news of the day: Mine clearance mission along China-Vietnam border

Since 1990, both China and Vietnam have been conducting mine-clearing campaigns along their joint border.  This is to address the legacy of the 1979 boarder war and the skirmishes that followed. An estimated 2 million landmines were laid during the war.


According to China daily:

Around 6,000 people, aged between eight and 84, have been injured or disabled in Wenshan prefecture, 600 meters away from the frontier at the nearest, since 1979 after stepping on the landmines, which also killed a number of wild animals and livestock, Yunnan.cn reported in 2011.

In Funing county of Wenshan prefecture, one or two people are still hurt every year by landmines, despite many mine clearance projects and warnings and fences set up around mine fields and its Tianpeng village, 600 meters from the China-Vietnam border, was once infamous in China for having "87 villagers with only 78 legs"

 

Note the mine-protection shoes he is wearing. 

Type 052D destroyer, DDG 174 Hefei, a look inside.

The PLAN, and to a greater extent the PLA in general, is cheap (I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again) therefore the Spartan-look of their most advanced DDG is not unexpected.  That said, the crew comfort level is still a far cry from those good ole Luda days.

 H/PJ-38 130mm dual purpose gun, the most powerful artillery currently in service with the PLAN

The Cold-Launch VLS system and the H/PJ-12 CIWS

Note the Active Phased Array radar mounted on the superstructure

1x3 torpedo tubes on either side off the hull

 One of the four 18-tube decoy rocket launchers

The CCTV footage on the Mali car bomb attack.

A Chinese UN peacekeeper was killed and four others injured in a Wednesday morning attack in northern Mali claimed by ­al-Qaeda’s North African branch.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1961583/chinese-un-peacekeeper-killed-mali-attack-al-qaeda

Analysts said more casualties among Chinese troops may be unavoidable as Beijing’s contribution to peacekeeping grows.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the incident was a terrorist attack aimed at UN peacekeepers, and demanded an investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“It is a grave and intolerable crime. China strongly condemns it,” Hua said.
Chinese troops did not ‘fail’ hostages in Mali hotel siege, military experts say

US-based monitoring group SITE said al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) reported that its al-Mourabitoun battalion engaged in a clash with “Crusader occupation forces”, referring to the UN mission in Mali. AQIM said its fighters were “thrashing” the enemy.

Chinese soldiers are part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission that has been stationed in northern Mali for three years since separatists joined jihadists to seize the region from the government in Bamako. The peacekeepers were hit by rockets or mortars fired at their site in Gao. Four people were killed and more than a dozen wounded.
The only way to avoid casualties is not to send peacekeepers, but thatwould be a bigger loss
Shanghai-based military ­expert Ni Lexiong

In all, 3,000 Chinese peacekeepers are serving in 10 regions, including 2,400 in Africa. Most are engineers, transport experts, police and medical staff. The forces sent to Mali in 2014 were China’s first overseas combat troops. President Xi Jinping promised in September to ­provide 8,000 personnel for UN peacekeeping operations.

With more Chinese peacekeepers to be deployed to conflict zones, observers expect more ­casualties.

Shanghai-based military ­expert Ni Lexiong said despite the risk China needed to be involved in UN peacekeeping missions as a “responsible power”, to facilitate its economic expansion, and to improve the military’s capacity. “The only way to avoid casualties is not to send peacekeepers, but that would be a bigger loss,” Ni said.
Gunman killed in attack on Mali hotel hosting EU military training mission

Defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said the military was “shocked by the terrorist attack” but China would continue to ­support United Nations peacekeeping operations.