124th Amphibious Mechanized Infantry Division, 42nd Group Army -- one of PLA's elites -- was reformed into two Combined-Arms Brigades during last round of re-org 6 months ago. Half of the 124th became 1st Combined-Arms Brigade and the other became the 125th Combined-Arms Brigade. Both are organic to the newly minted 74th Group Army.
Here are some PR photos from their combat readiness maneuver training yesterday:
Type05 (ZBD-05) Command Variant (note the SatCom radome). This ride longs to the Commander of its 8th Battalion
Type05 (ZBD-05) APC variant (note the 12.7mm HMG mount)
Sunday, August 13, 2017
PLA orbat update, Southern Theater Command (74th and 75th GA)
Again, credit goes to Andrew KC, both photos and updates.
31st Group Army
73rd Group Army
3rd Combined-Arms Brigade
14th Combined-Arms Brigade
86th Combined-Arms Brigade
91st Combined-Arms Brigade
92nd Combined-Arms Brigade
73rd Special Ops Brigade
73rd Air-Defense Brigade
73rd Artillery Brigade
The 86th Motorized Division of the former 31st GA has been re-organized
into two brigades. One of the brigades here is the 86th Combined-Arms
Brigade (合成第86旅) of the 73rd GA, and most of its assets came from the
armored regiment of the former 86th Division. So far the Armored
Infantry Battalion's ZBD04's from the former 91st Motorized Division
have been consolidated into this new brigade.
The new 86th Combined-Arms
Brigade on the move
The former 3rd Motorized Infantry Brigade of the former 1st GA is now
subordinate to the newly formed 73rd GA. It is now called the 3rd
Combined Arms Brigade (合成第3旅).
The 91st Motorized Infantry Division of the former 31st GA is now the
91st Combined-Arms Brigade (合成第91旅) of the 73rd GA. The unit is taking
on amphibious role with hand-me-down Type 63A amphibious light tanks. 91st's four Combined-Arms Battalions
(合成1,2,3,4营) are equipped with 2 companies of Type 63A each.
91st Combined-Arms Brigade
91st Combined-Arms Brigade
14th Combined-Arms Brigade 合成第14旅 was the 14th Amphibious Armored Brigade, 31GA, Nanjing MR at Zhangzhou
14th Amphibious Armored Brigade
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Storming the beach -- 124th Amphibious Mechanized Infantry Division
After the much-publicized unveiling of Chinese Zubr offloading a Type96
MBT in July, the 42nd Group Army, Guangzhou MR conducted another small
scale (by Chinese standards) drill two days ago to hone their skills.
A landing craft air cushion approaches an amphibious
dock landing ship during a joint landing training exercise on August 20,
2015. The landing craft air cushion and the amphibious dock landing
ship are assigned to a landing ship flotilla under the South China Sea
Fleet of the PLA Navy.
It’s rare to see NATO and the US launch such a high-profile anti-East
Turkistan Islamic Movement campaign, said a Chinese national strategy
researcher in an interview with the Global Times on Feb. 8.
The US Defense Department sees room to work with China in the fight
against jihadists in Afghanistan, Asia Times reported Thursday, quoting
assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Randall
Schriver’s response about whether China could be a constructive
counterterrorism partner in Afghanistan.
China has been against violent terrorist activities in all forms in
Afghanistan, and wishes NATO can safeguard peace and stability in
Afghanistan and play a positive role in the country’s reconstruction,
said Qian Feng, a researcher at Tsinghua University’s National Strategy
Institute (NSI), adding that this campaign shows the US’s positive
attitude toward cooperation with China in counterterrorism.
Through multinational cooperation mechanisms and the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), China has actively participated in the
peace and reconstruction work in Afghanistan, said Qian. Combating such
terrorist groups as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement is in China’s
interests, and also serves the interests of the US and other countries.
This is a sound start and it’s hoped that there will be more room for cooperation, the researcher said.
The US, Britain, and the UN have all listed the East Turkistan
Islamic Movement as an Islamic extremist separatist organization.
The airstrikes targeted training camps near the Afghan border with
China and Tajikistan. As the military announced Tuesday, “Over the past
96 hours, U.S. forces conducted air operations to strike Taliban
training facilities in Badakhshan province, preventing the planning and
rehearsal of terrorist acts near the border with China and Tajikistan.”
KABUL
(Reuters) - U.S. forces in Afghanistan have attacked networks of
anti-China militants in action likely to please Beijing which had called
for Western cooperation in its fight against the group it says wants to
split off its Xinjiang region.
The strikes in northern
Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province destroyed Taliban training camps which
support militant operations in Afghanistan as well as operations by the
East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in the border region with China
and Tajikistan, Afghanistan’s NATO-led mission said in a release on
Thursday.
“The U.S. strikes in support Afghanistan in reassuring
its neighbors that it is not a safe sanctuary for terrorists who want to
carry out cross-border operations,” it said.
The force gave no
more details about the attacks or any estimate of casualties but it said
the ETIM was behind attacks both inside and outside China and two of
its members had been involved in a 2002 plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in
Kyrgyzstan.
“They pose a threat to China and enjoy support from the Taliban in Badakhshan and throughout the border region,” the force said.
The
group is drawn from members of China’s Uighur minority, a mostly Muslim
Turkic-speaking people who inhabit the Xinjiang region in China’s far
west.
China has long been concerned that instability in Afghanistan could spill over into Xinjiang.
Hundreds
of people have been killed in violence in recent years in Xinjiang.
Beijing blames the bloodshed on Islamist militants and separatists,
though rights groups say the unrest is more a reaction to repressive
Chinese policies.
The United States, Britain and the United Nations have listed the ETIM as a terrorist group.
Reporting by Robert Birsel; Editing by Alison Williams Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Monday, January 08, 2018
China is building an Army base, not manning one, for the Afghan armed forces
Report: China Building Military Base on Afghan-Tajik Border January 7, 2018 - 10:35pm, by Joshua Kucera
Report: China Building Military Base on Afghan-Tajik Border A
Chinese truck stop in Murghab, near Tajikistan's border with
Afghanistan and China. China is reportedly building a new military base
in Afghanistan, in which case this road could see more Chinese military
traffic. (photo: The Bug Pit)
China is building a military base
for the Afghan armed forces in the province of Badakhshan, a senior
Afghan military official has said. The plan, if it is realized, promises
a deeper Chinese military involvement in Tajikistan, which is necessary
as a supply corridor to Badakhshan.
The plans for the new base
were worked out during a visit last month by an Afghan defense
delegation to Beijing, the official, General Dawlat Waziri, told the
news site Fergana News.
At that meeting, the two sides announced
their intention to “deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields
including anti-terrorism operations, and push forward the state and
military relations between the two countries.”
China will supply
everything the base needs, Waziri said, including "weapons, uniforms for
soldiers, military equiment and everything else needed for its [the
base's] functioning," Fergana reported.
This is the latest move in Beijing's steadily increasing involvement in security issues on its western border.
"China
worries that Chinese Uighurs among the terrorists' ranks can cross into
Chinese territory through Afghanistan and become a headache for the
Chinese authorities," one Afghan security official told Fergana on
condition of anonymity.
For Central Asia, this has important
implications because Tajijkistan appears to be an integral part of
Chinese-Afghan military cooperation. Badakhshan shares a short
(76-kilometer) border with China, but in a region impassable by
vehicles.
Badakhshan is most easily reached from China via
Tajikistan's Pamir region, and some media have reported that Chinese
military vehicles were using Tajikistan territory to transit to
Badakhshan for military patrols. (A western diplomat in Central Asia has
told The Bug Pit that those reports were credible.)
China,
Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan (which also borders Badakhstan)
are all members of a new Beijing-led security grouping, the
Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism, rolled out in
2016, to Russia's consternation. Also in 2016, China and Tajikistan held
their first-ever joint bilateral military exercises in the part of
Tajikistan bordering on Badakhshan.
A Chinese official, speaking
on condition of anonymity, told Kabul-based analyst Franz J. Marty a
year ago that the Chinese patrols inside Afghanistan had ended in late
2016.
It's not clear whether those patrols were ever restarted,
but this base, if realized, would seem to portend much heavier traffic
in the future.
The Fergana report said, citing an unnamed source
in the Afghanistan Defense Ministry, that work has already begun on the
base's planning. A special commission has been created to work out the
base's location and other technical details, and a delegation of Chinese
military experts were going to be visiting Afghanistan in the coming
days to work on that, Fergana reported.
Wakhan Corridor -- China's back door to Afghanistan
Back in June 2009, China mulled the request to open the Wakhan Corridor
to serve as an alternative supply route to help forces battling the
Taliban. At the same time, the latest Google Earth images show this
new road, supply depots, and constructed guard posts. This corridor
has been closed for over 100 years and was considered inaccessible as
recent as 2007. The decision to now open the corridor is no longer a
logistical issue.
Here is the link to my previous blog entry regarding the Wakhan Corridor
Chinese
and Afghan foreign ministry officials may open up a strategically
important and scenic border area, officials say after a meeting.
The
two sides met in Beijing this week to discuss the 76km (47 mile) border
that divides the two countries, known as the Wakhan Corridor.
Afghanistan wants the border to be opened as an alternative supply route to help forces battling the Taliban.
The Chinese say they will "earnestly study" the proposal.
'Positive attitude'
"The
(terrorism) solution must be comprehensive, regional and
international," Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said in a
speech earlier this week.
He said it was his "personal wish" to open the Wakhan Corridor.
Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said his country would adopt "an
earnest and positive attitude" on co-operation with Afghanistan "on
transport, trade and economy".
"We're willing to earnestly study his suggestions," he said.
The Wakhan Corridor is about 210km long (130 miles) long.
Correspondents
say that the idea of using it as an alternative route for supplying US
and Nato forces in Afghanistan has been floated before.
They say
the call by Afghanistan is likely to fall on deaf ears in China, which
fiercely resists any initiatives viewed as undermining its national
sovereignty.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
A follow up to my earlier blog entry of “Will China play a more “direct” role in both the Pakistan and Afghanistan conflicts”
Photo of the Wakhan Corridor from the PLA Daily.
A follow up to my earlier blog entry of “Will China play a more “direct” role in both the Pakistan and Afghanistan conflicts”
There
was speculation that China would play a “more active role” in
supporting NATO's attempt to pacify Afghanistan, especially after
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Chinese forces could join
the military coalition in Afghanistan during a speech to Council on
Foreign Relations (here)
It
was followed shortly by NATO’s statement that we “may ask China to
provide support for the war effort in Afghanistan, including possibly
opening a supply link for alliance forces” (here)
However, those two diplomatic overtures met with the standard Chinese
government statement of “placing the decision under consideration” and
in June 2008, Afghanistan's foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta,
joined the call for China to open the Wakhan Corridor to be used as a
supply route for NATO’s ongoing operation. (here)
Since
I blogged “Will China play a more 'direct' role in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan conflicts," there were no major developments as China seemed
to follow its foreign policy doctrine of "noninterference in others
internal affairs" strictly. Recently, the Chinese media has started to
focus on the developments in Central Asia. Perhaps it is due to the
recent Xinjing riot as both the Global Times (here) and the PLA Daily (here)
wrote articles about the Wakhan Corridor to generate interest in that
region. Today, photos of PAP (People's Armed Police) personnel
training Afghan police surfaced on Chinese internet (as opposed to the
"other" internet). Oddly enough, there is nothing in the media that has
covered this important shift.
While the People's Armed Police is now officially under the military CMC
command, it seems to have maintained its "civilian police"
organizational and command structures with Zongdui (division) HQ at
provincial level and Zhidui (regiment) HQ at prefectural level. The
Commando (platoon) units are, of course, your everyday traffic cops --
doing nothing but give out speeding citations to fulfill their daily
quota.
This Snow Leopard Commando unit participated in the 2009 and the 2015
military parades. I suppose an inspiration to a certain president in
North American .... I kid, I kid.
Anyways, here are some PR photos from their recent Blue vs Red drill
against a regular PAP unit. You can tell which is which by looking at
their uniform.
