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
“Multi-domain fusion operations” and “cross-domain collaborative operations” are the latest operational ideas proposed by the US military in recent years, guiding the gradual upgrade and evolution of the US military’s combat concepts to joint concepts, and building a new war style based on this, covering all combat fields such as “land, sea, air, space, and network”, and integrating various capabilities such as space, network, deterrence, transportation, electromagnetic spectrum, and missile defense. Through this new combat idea, we can compete with competitors such as Russia in various fields, develop asymmetric advantages, and ensure the leading position of our country’s military strength. What advantages do multi-domain fusion operations and cross-domain offense and defense have in actual combat, and what are their development prospects?
The evolution of the concept of global warfare
After the mid-1970s, the U.S. Army successively proposed combat concepts such as “central combat”, “expanded battlefield” and “integrated battlefield”, forming the “air-ground integrated combat” combat theory. Air-ground integrated combat requires the coordination and unity of ground forces and the air force, and conducts deep operations on the basis of the air force’s battlefield air interdiction and offensive air support. For the first time, the combat concept of multi-service coordinated operations appeared, and this combat theory was also tested in actual combat in the Gulf War. This is the starting point for the birth of the concept of multi-domain warfare and even global warfare.
On October 3, 2016, at the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army, General David G. Perkins, then commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, delivered a public speech in which he used the word “domain” for the first time to accurately summarize the new form of international warfare, and put forward the view that “all domains of the United States are challenged” and “advantages in a single domain cannot win the war”, and then introduced the concept of “multi-domain combat”. The operational concept of “multi-domain combat” requires close cooperation between the combat forces of various services, abandoning the inertia of the service thinking of pursuing control in a single domain, and providing a “multi-domain solution” for the national command authorities.
In October 2018, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command issued the 1.5 version of the concept of “U.S. Army Multi-Domain Operations 2028”. As the most mature version of the concept, it replaced the original word “battle” with “operation” and extended the concept of “multi-domain combat”. The concept of “multi-domain combat” is only applicable to the conflict stage, but in the case that the competition between nation states has become a new factor in the world situation, simply winning the actual conflict has very limited significance for the overall combat background, so the concept of “multi-domain” must be extended and deepened. The concept of “multi-domain combat” introduces relevant cross-government and cross-institutional elements into the “competition continuum” of “competition, armed conflict and return to competition”, and puts forward the three core concepts of “calibrating force posture, using multi-domain formations, and achieving multi-domain aggregation” in “multi-domain warfare”, clarifies the specific needs of “multi-domain formations”, and refines the corresponding combat capabilities that troops at different levels need to have in “multi-domain warfare”.
“Cross-domain coordination” refers to the mutual cooperation of various services to make up for the deficiencies of other forces in combat, thereby achieving complementary efficiency in various fields and successfully completing combat missions. Guided by the basic ideas of multi-domain integration and cross-domain coordination, the US military has formed the concept of “full-domain warfare”, that is, to develop the joint combat capabilities of various services throughout the entire process of combat and training, and realize the transformation of the army into a joint combat force.
The advantages of all-domain operations are obvious
Judging from the current international military development situation, countries will face an increasingly complex, deadly, extremely active, and urbanized battlefield. The combat environment is becoming increasingly fragile, and the combat mode of the traditional battlefield is no longer applicable to contemporary warfare. Against this background, the US military has proposed the concept of full-domain warfare in order to cope with the increasingly complex international environment. What are the advantages of multi-domain warfare and cross-domain attack and defense on the modern battlefield?
Multi-domain integration enables the advantages of different arms to overlap and their disadvantages to complement each other. The predecessor of multi-domain warfare, “Air-Land Integrated Warfare”, was a combat style of joint operations between the Air Force and the Army that the U.S. military attempted to establish in the early 1980s in response to the huge threat posed by Soviet tank clusters to NATO on the European plains. This combat mode requires a high degree of coordination between ground forces and air forces. Ground forces conduct offensive mobile defense operations on the front line, while the Air Force blocks the replenishment of front-line forces by striking the enemy’s rear, thereby providing tactical support to the front-line army. This is also the first time in the history of the U.S. military that the Air Force and the Army have conducted in-depth cooperation, which has increased the complexity and flexibility of the U.S. military’s operations, made the U.S. military’s tactical options richer and more dynamic, and posed a greater strategic deterrence to the enemy.
On the other hand, cross-domain attack and defense can expand asymmetric advantages and impose greater restrictions on the enemy’s power. Since the concept of cross-domain attack and defense emphasizes the coordination of offensive and defensive forces in different fields, during the battle, the army can exert greater pressure on the enemy through its own advantageous fields, making it difficult for the enemy’s power to be maximized, thereby expanding the asymmetric advantage, maximizing its own strength and weakening the enemy’s power. In recent years, all countries have attached great importance to the technical development and research in the field of network electromagnetics. To some extent, this is because the field of network electromagnetics is a new product that came with the information age. Emerging powers that try to catch up with old powers can establish their own advantages through the development of this field, while old powers do not want to be overtaken and have fields that can be used as weaknesses by the enemy. Therefore, all countries have unanimously regarded the research and development of the field of network electromagnetics as one of their current key areas of development, which also reflects the great power of cross-domain attack and defense in modern information-based intelligent warfare.
Global war has broad prospects for development
At present, the concept of “global warfare” only has a theoretical basis, and it still takes a lot of effort to convert theory into practice. The vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff clearly stated in an interview: “The seamless integration of various fields and effective command and control are still a daunting challenge. We are not sure how to do it, and no one has a ready-made answer.”
In the process of achieving true joint operations, there are obstacles in various aspects, including culture, economy, and politics. These problems will affect the establishment of truly joint combat forces and joint combat modes. First, each service has formed its own unique combat style and combat culture in the long-term development process. The differences in the culture of different services may lead to different concepts of combat focus on the construction of joint combat forces, which in turn leads to unclear directions and goals for force construction. Secondly, the budget for military construction is limited, and each service will try its best to use it for the update and research and development of its own weapons and equipment, resulting in the budget giving priority to meeting the needs of each service rather than joint combat needs. Finally, it is difficult for the Ministry of National Defense to obtain the power of integrated government and allies. “Cross-domain coordination” is a game of national comprehensive power, which includes politics, economy, diplomacy, intelligence and other aspects. It requires the coordination and coordination of government agencies in various fields of the country, and relying solely on the Ministry of National Defense does not have enough power to achieve the integration of various forces.
These issues all affect the development of “all-domain warfare”, but in any case, as a new combat concept, “all-domain warfare” will surely become an important mode of future combat. The United States released the “Joint All-Domain Combat Software” in April this year, aiming to develop theater-level joint all-domain combat software to allocate combat resources and achieve coordinated killing in the fields of land, sea, air, space, and electromagnetic fields. This action also shows the United States’ determination to achieve “all-domain warfare.” (Zhang Haoyue, Shen Qiyou, Ma Jianguang)
