‘As we continue to transition more and more from mechanized warfare to informationized warfare the new dynamics of modern warfare in the 21st century will be the focus of all modern armies’
According to the Indian military experts, China has vastly improved its military across the board, upgrading weapons systems, integrating command structures and developing hi-tech informationized systems. It has placed a major emphasis on the information war dynamic. The modernization of the People’s Liberation Armies has turned China into a military powerhouse, fit to rival any modern army in the digitalized age of warfare.
Reforms have been carried out in order to organize and re-organize command structures to suit the kind of warfare envisaged for the future. The country’s infrastructure has also been upgraded over the past decade to meet strategic and operational needs of the military. People’s Liberation Army’s headquarters underwent a major transformation in order to meet the requirements to build a force which is capable of completing its missions and tasks in the information age.
In 2010 a major general, head of information warfare, command and training department of the PLA’s National Defense University said, “Seizing the control of information power is the direct purpose of information operations,” he said. “In the modern military, each combat unit and each weapon system are coagulated to become one operational body through the bonding action of the military information system, and if it loses this bonding action, then the military becomes a plate of loose sand.”
What will ultimately matter in peacetime, as well as war time, is who is dominating the information war. More and more the dominance over competitors relies on who is dominating the intelligence and information war, as we spiral on into a true digital era the reliance on information and its utilization will matter just as much as winning on the battlefield.
China has pursued drastic overhauls in order to modernize its military for the future. China’s bi-annual white paper laid out an argument that warfare is in transition, from “mechanization” to “informization” and is transforming in order to meet the changing dynamics of warfare.
Gerard Dinnen
SouthFront
