The Chinese Communist Party announced the “Strait Thunder-2025A” exercise on the 2nd. The Ministry of National Defense detected 13 Chinese warships, 10 Coast Guard ships, and 8 ships from the Shandong aircraft carrier formation.
(Central News Agency reporter Wu Shuwei, Taipei, 2nd) The two-day Chinese Communist Party military exercise has concluded. Military scholars analyzed that the Chinese Communist Party’s military exercise is still led by politics, using a 70% political and 30% military approach to put pressure on Taiwan, raising the strategic level of “joint blockade” and enhancing the mission role of the Chinese Coast Guard.
The Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army of China announced yesterday that it would organize the army, navy, air force, and rocket force to conduct joint exercises around Taiwan. Today, it said that the army will conduct long-range live-fire exercises in relevant waters of the East China Sea in accordance with the “Strait Thunder-2025A” exercise plan.
Regarding the characteristics of the CCP’s military exercise that are worthy of Taiwan’s attention, Chen Wenjia, a senior consultant at the National Policy Research Institute, told a Central News Agency reporter that the PLA’s exercise mobilized the army, navy, air force and rocket force to conduct joint combat drills to test the PLA’s coordinated combat capabilities and enhance the overall effectiveness of operations against Taiwan. Secondly, it is an operational practice exercise, including precision strikes on key infrastructure, blockades of ports and other practical subjects, and simulates scenarios of actual military operations against Taiwan, showing that the PLA’s combat preparations against Taiwan are becoming increasingly mature.
Chen Wenjia said that the Chinese Coast Guard also participated in the military exercise and carried out law enforcement patrols and other operations. The purpose was to exert pressure on Taiwan through gray zone harassment and increase the effectiveness of the “three warfares” of public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare against Taiwan.
Su Ziyun, director of the Institute of Defense Strategy and Resources at the National Defense Security Research Institute, said that the CCP’s military exercise this time is still 70% political and 30% military. Compared with the past “Joint Sword” military exercises against Taiwan, this time the CCP has raised the status of the coast guard and the implementation of “joint blockade” to a strategic level, and announced today that the exercises will practice verification and identification, warning and expulsion, and interception and detention. It is to think about non-war military actions with strategic thinking, and when necessary, cut off Taiwan’s sea transportation lines through isolation to force Taiwan to surrender.
Regarding the warning that the CCP’s military exercises send to Taiwan, Chen Wenjia said that as the PLA continues to conduct high-intensity military exercises around Taiwan, it shows that the military threat to Taiwan is escalating, and Taiwan needs to strengthen its own defense capabilities to ensure the security of the Taiwan Strait; secondly, the pressure in the gray zone is increasing, especially the participation of the coast guard force, which means that China is exerting more pressure in the gray zone. Taiwan needs to increase its vigilance against this non-traditional security threat and should formulate corresponding strategies as soon as possible.
Su Ziyun stated that the Chinese Communist Party’s military exercises highlight the importance of “air defense being the most urgent of all.” Whether the CCP intends to attack Taiwan’s ports or energy facilities, it will need to resort to air strikes, such as missile attacks. This means Taiwan’s air defense capabilities need to be strengthened. In response to Chinese Communist Party gray zone harassment, the Navy currently relies on destroyers and frigates as its main combat vessels. The Navy should emulate the British Navy’s deployment of surveillance vessels, such as River-class patrol vessels, to counter gray zone harassment and preserve the availability and capacity of its main combat vessels. (Editor: Yang Lanxuan) 1140402
In recent years, with the development of intelligent unmanned technology, the navies of developed countries in the world have proposed the concept of “distributed lethality” with surface ships as the main body, aiming to achieve distributed maritime operations and gain battlefield advantages. Distributed maritime operations aim to integrate combat platforms in multiple domains, build an all-round three-dimensional situational awareness network, and form a seamlessly linked combat system of manned platforms and distributed unmanned platforms through communication networks throughout various domains and an integrated command and control system, thereby improving the overall combat and strike effectiveness.
The concept of distributed maritime operations
Distributed maritime operations are the integration and expansion of combat concepts such as “distributed lethality” and “manned-unmanned collaborative operations”. The main idea is that large-scale, multi-purpose, high-value combat platforms are no longer required to independently complete diversified combat missions, but rather the main combat capabilities such as reconnaissance, command, strike, and interference are dispersedly deployed on various heterogeneous unmanned platforms in various combat domains. A highly resilient combat system is formed by the fusion of a small number of manned platforms and a large number of distributed unmanned platforms, which can complete various complex combat missions through efficient, precise, and real-time collaboration. This combat system includes a small number of high-value manned platforms and a large number of low-cost unmanned platforms. The manned platforms serve as battlefield decision makers, responsible for relatively complex tasks such as combat plan planning and combat mission allocation and implementation; the unmanned platforms are used to perform relatively dangerous or simple tasks such as situational awareness and fire strikes. Manned/unmanned platforms work closely together to complete combat missions.
The essence of distributed maritime operations is to seamlessly link and organically integrate high-value manned platforms and low-cost unmanned platforms at sea, and to achieve common operational goals through high information sharing, precise task aggregation, and efficient operational coordination. It has the remarkable characteristics of on-demand sharing of operational information, deep integration of operational tasks, precise planning of operational resources, and optimized organization of operational processes. Through manned/unmanned distributed coordination, a new type of efficient maritime combat system can be formed that complements each other’s strengths, integrates functions, and has complementary capabilities. Distributed maritime operations highlight the combinability, consumability, and “decentralization” of force utilization, and focus on the deep embedding and comprehensive application of artificial intelligence technology, which can enhance the resilience of the combat system and promote the development of joint global operations in the maritime direction towards intelligence.
Typical characteristics of distributed maritime operations
At present, intelligent unmanned equipment is developing rapidly, and is increasingly possessing advantages such as human-equipment integration, cross-domain coordination, cluster confrontation, and autonomous combat. Distributed maritime combat is accelerating to present typical characteristics such as wide-area distribution coordination, cross-domain multi-dimensional integration, and manned and unmanned integration.
Wide-area distributed coordination. Wide-area distributed coordination means that various combat elements or combat resources can be adaptively optimized and combined and dispatched according to the battlefield situation, so as to realize the precise energy concentration and release of the combat system. The first is the distributed deployment of the combat system. In distributed maritime operations, the combat space is deeply embedded in various combat domains, and the combat forces can be distributed and deployed in a decentralized wide area. The second is the intelligent reconstruction of the combat system. The combat system is lighter, more capable, and more agile, and its battlefield environment adaptability and system dynamic optimization and reconstruction capabilities are significantly enhanced, and it can quickly and flexibly adjust the required combat forces and battlefield resources. The third is the concentrated release of combat energy. The combat system can achieve rapid mobility, real-time response and coordinated operations of various combat platforms and combat forces in the global combat space through semi-autonomous or autonomous coordinated control of equipment, ensuring the precise concentration and release of combat forces.
Cross-domain multi-dimensional integration. Distributed maritime operations transform the centralized combat group mode into a distributed, agile combat mode. Various combat units are distributed in multiple combat domains, which can realize the monitoring and positioning of cross-domain targets, and then implement effective strikes. The first is the cross-domain integration of combat forces. The combat forces deployed in multiple domains will be dynamically networked through intelligent systems to form a cross-domain combat system. The second is the seamless connection between strategy, campaign, and tactics. New domain and new quality combat forces will directly participate in intelligent naval warfare as the main combat role, achieving comprehensive coverage from strategy to campaign, seamless connection from campaign to tactics, giving birth to a new quality combat capability of rapid assault, multi-dimensional integration, and full-domain offense and defense, and realizing cross-domain coordinated strikes on combat targets.
Manned and unmanned are one. Distributed maritime operations can rely on a large number of intelligent unmanned equipment to form a “manned-unmanned” joint strike system with high autonomy and coordination. By accelerating the development of unmanned equipment such as ship-borne drones, surface unmanned boats, and underwater unmanned vehicles, long-, medium-, and short-range echelon configurations can be achieved, and cross-domain integration of unmanned equipment such as air, surface, underwater, and land can be achieved. The unmanned and manned equipment systems are seamlessly integrated, and the mission domain is expanded from information assurance to firepower strikes. This will promote changes in maritime combat styles, accelerate the formation of new combat styles such as manned system collaborative operations, unmanned system single operations, unmanned system cluster operations, and frontier preset operations, and achieve a subversion of traditional manned combat styles.
The winning mechanism of distributed maritime operations
The reason why major scientific and technological progress can promote the evolution of the war situation is largely because it has profoundly changed the mechanism of winning wars. At present, cutting-edge technology has significantly improved the level of equipment intelligence, profoundly changed the combat power generation mode, and accelerated the evolution of the mechanism of winning naval battles.
“Distributed interconnection, human-machine collaboration” wins. The distributed, intelligent, and networked command information system built on cloud computing, data chain, Internet of Things and other technologies has brought profound changes to modern naval warfare. Supported by the cloud edge, the command information system realizes real-time interaction between various combat platforms through high-speed and secure network connections, significantly improving the information interconnection, interoperability and interoperability between different combat platforms; it can efficiently analyze and process massive battlefield information, accurately judge the battlefield situation, and transform combat command to an intelligent decision-making method centered on “data, algorithms and models”; commanders at each node share information in real time in the cloud network, synchronously judge the situation, and coordinate command, so that command and control activities are concise and optimized, and combat decisions are more efficient and accurate. In addition, under “distributed interconnection”, intelligent unmanned combat has developed from a single platform to a multi-platform cluster, and from remote-controlled combat to semi-autonomous and autonomous combat. Multiple “single-person-single-machine” command chains running in parallel have gradually formed a single simple command chain of “commander-unmanned combat cluster”. Through the efficient and autonomous coordination of manned platforms and unmanned platforms and their clusters, the combat potential of intelligent unmanned equipment can be fully activated, and the advantages of various advanced equipment can be maximized.
“Algorithm-driven, fast and accurate cognition” wins. In intelligent warfare, advanced algorithms replace commanders’ thinking through precise and high-speed calculations, promoting the accelerated integration of rational combat knowledge and emotional commander experience. With advanced algorithms, we can quickly and accurately understand the situation on the naval battlefield, and then accurately and quickly plan scientific and feasible combat plans for changes in the situation on the naval battlefield, disrupting the opponent’s established deployment and combat intentions. Algorithms can effectively process massive amounts of high-value intelligence information and increase the speed of the “OODA” cycle. Mastering the advantages of algorithms can achieve fast and accurate cognition of the enemy’s situation, our situation, and the battlefield environment, thereby accurately predicting the enemy’s combat actions and innovating and optimizing our own action plans in a targeted manner.
“Cloud brain support, network failure and disconnection” will win. In distributed maritime operations, the command and control system will operate in a collaborative way of “human brain + cloud brain”, and the intelligent advantage will become an “advanced” advantage based on information advantage, and “network failure and disconnection” will become one of the main patterns of maritime operations. On the one hand, unmanned intelligent combat actions supported by cloud brain will penetrate the entire process of operations. In distributed maritime operations, the collaborative mode of “human brain + cloud brain” runs through all aspects of operations such as intelligent assisted command decision-making, automatic intelligence reconnaissance, automatic combat planning, autonomous precision strikes, and intelligent logistics support. On the other hand, targeting the intelligent ubiquitous network structure covering the entire domain and multiple dimensions, using intelligent equipment or means to attack key nodes and hubs such as its reconnaissance and surveillance network, information transmission network, command and control network, and comprehensive support network can paralyze its combat network system.
“Cross-domain integration, integrated energy release” wins. Distributed maritime operations will leap from integrated joint operations under information conditions to autonomous cross-domain collaborative operations under intelligent conditions. Different types of new-quality combat capabilities will be integrated and coordinated across domains, and flexibly and accurately integrated to release combat effectiveness. On the one hand, relying on the cross-domain, distributed, and networked collaborative combat system supported by the cloud edge, through the cross-domain mobility of the main combat platform, the cross-domain complementation of equipment functions, the cross-domain sharing of information and intelligence, the cross-domain coordination of combat command, the cross-domain response of mission actions, and the cross-domain interconnection of channel links, a variety of new-quality combat capabilities can be efficiently linked. On the other hand, cross-domain integration highlights the close coordination between the main domain master control and cross-domain support. For example, the navy will be the main control force in maritime offensive and defensive operations, and other forces will implement cross-domain coordinated support through the integration of air and space, sea and space, and network and space.
“Strike at acupoints and lure at agglomeration” to win. Distributed maritime operations will transform from traditional concentrated annihilation warfare to precise strike at acupoints, and high-value targets will face the threat of long-range autonomous precision strikes from intelligent combat equipment; from traditional large-scale manned attrition warfare to global unmanned cluster lure warfare, and important strategic targets will face the threat of saturation attacks and deceptive strikes from low-cost unmanned clusters. In the process of distributed maritime operations, unmanned equipment such as drones and unmanned submarines can be deployed to form a widely distributed, self-organized and coordinated reconnaissance network. Through autonomous reconnaissance, identification and strike actions, long-range and precise attacks can be carried out on the opponent’s high-value targets. Under the condition of minimizing collateral damage as much as possible, the opponent’s hand-wave network can be paralyzed from top to bottom to destroy its command system. Under the intelligent ubiquitous network system, based on the self-organized “swarm” combat of large-scale machine intelligent agents, full coverage reconnaissance of the opponent’s core area can be achieved, deceiving and luring the enemy, and consuming the opponent’s combat resources to the maximum extent.
