Recently, 1st Destroyer Flotilla, Northern Theater Command, cross trained with a certain ground force SpOps brigade aboard of non-amphibious assault ships (DDG116 and FFG538). If this is a beginning of a new trend, aircraft carriers, destroyers and even military cargo ships could become home to Ground Force SpOps, amphibious units as well as PLAN's own smurfs heading out to make this world safe for Confucianism.
After years of naval build up, the CMC still has only four Type071 LPD capable of long distance blue-ocean operations. With no amphibs on regular patrol at high sea, the CMC might not able to deploy to a region where contingencies could erupt. Hope I am not reading too much into this, but putting additional high-readiness ground force SpOps on naval vessels could help to meet growing "Historical Mission" requirements in Africa and elsewhere.
Clearly, the plan is in the early stage, but having an additional determent aboard could give naval combatant commanders a hand in recovering downed pilot, pulling Chinese out of an embassy under attack, providing humanitarian assistance after a rapid developing natural disaster. For the ground force SpOps, that means new types of sea duty on ships across the all three Theater Commands. The newly commissioned naval marine brigades could focus on their core mission of recovering a run-away province. This is a way to make sea services more versatile, agile and flexible.
Army green vs smurf blue
Ground force SpOps.
A Chinese Joint Rapid Reaction Force (JRRF) in the making?
Soon, the CMC will have two corps of light infantry (The Marine with six
infantry and a SpOP brigades and the Airborne of the same), two Army
Air Assault Brigades (the 121st and the 161th) and a super heavy Mech
Infantry Division (the 112th) under its direct strategic command. It
does not take much of an imagination to picture a Joint Rapid Reaction
Force in the making. The JRRF (
kuaisu fanyin budui) concept
was first proposed by the British Army in the 1990s consists of combat
and support elements from land, sea and air to a trouble spot rapidly
and at a short notice. More importantly than just showing the flag, a
JRRF is capable of fighting a high intensity small/medium scale
engagement.
The CMC might not able to project the 15,000 personnel of its British
Army counter part to a great distance. However, it has demonstrated
previously on several occasions, both in drills and in natural disaster
responses, that it can deploy several First Echelon battalion size
battle-groups within a 48-hour window (
here).
"2 days after May 12th 2008 Earthquake hit, of 81,000 PLA troops arrived, there were 4,000 airborne, 2,600 Marine, Naval, and
Air Force personnel, and troop units directly affiliated with the CMC’s
four general headquarters/departments."
Of course, the size of the Chinese JRRF First Echelon will decrease in
accordance with the deployment distance -- It is one thing to deploy
81,000 troops to Sichuan via internal rail and highway, it is a
completely different picture if the destination is North Africa, for
example. CMC's strategic transportation assets would be the bottleneck
in such an example. Its deployment capability can be easily calculated
by assessing the number of ships and transport planes currently
available.
15th Airborne Corps' new ORBAT
The CMC decommissioned three divisional headquarters (43rd, 44th and
45th) on April 19th, their regiments are now reformed into
6 brigades
(127th, 128th, 130th, 131st, 133rd, and 134th) directly under the corps
headquarters . Additionally, there will be a new SpOps Brigade, a
Strategic Support Brigade (Engineering, Communication, etc) and an
Aviation Brigade(Fixed And Rotary Wing Aircraft) bringing to a total of 9
line brigades.
Photos of the day: Vacation housewarming in Djibouti
999 Jingangshan LHD and 868 Donghaidao Mobile Landing Platform composing the first task force.
Here comes the PLAM
CCTV screen capture of the day: Launching Zubr LCAC from 868
Without the piggyback of a Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) such as the
868, the Zubr Class reaches 480 KM from shore on its own. When paired
with a MLP, that 480KM limitation is no longer an issue. As to what
purpose such a pairing serves, your guess is as good as mine.
