Digitised Army Programme

Last updated: 28 January 2007

Inspired by the army digitisation development programmes of many Western forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) established its own “Digitised Army” units in 2001. While sizes of these experimental units are mostly limited at company and battalion levels, but they include almost every operational service arms of the PLA ground forces, including infantry, armour, artillery, and special operations forces (SOF). The purposes of these units are to explore and test various equipments, organisational structures, tactics, and operational doctrines for the digitised army; and to identify potential weakness that can be used by the conventional PLA forces to defeat a digitised enemy force with technology dominance.

While detailed information regarding the development of the PLA digitisation is highly, it can be concluded that the PLA has mainly been focusing on three areas:

• Digitised soldier system similar to the U.S. Army “Land Warrior” programme;
• Digitised armoured troops;
• Digitised artillery

The PLA digitised soldier system mimics those similar systems in Western armies. It transforms individual soldiers into terminals (sensors and shooters) of an integrated network. Each digitised soldier can transfer real-time image and video battlefield information to the commanders at the operation centre, and can receive orders directly from across all levels in the chain-of-command. The digitised soldier system has been fielded by the special operations forces and airborne corps in limited numbers.

The PLA’s effort to develop a digitised armoured force can be traced back to the mid-1990s. Several digitised armoured battalions were formed in 1st Armoured Division (Chengde, Hebei Province) and 6th Armoured Division (Nankou, Beijing). These units are equipped with main battle tanks (MBT) and armoured combat vehicles that have received 'digitisation modifications', which enable every individual vehicle to possess capabilities such as independent navigation/positioning, battlefield image capturing, target acquisition, audio/image/video data transmissions, laser warning and defence, and expert system in decision making processes. The PLA is also keen to explore using digitised systems as “force multipliers” to upgrade its obsolete equipments.

Digitised Solider: A PLA soldier demonstrating his digitised soldier system (Source: Chinese Internet)

The PLA first demonstrated its digitised artillery in the joint arms exercise in 2000. With the introduction of a variety of aerial and land-based ISR sensors and inter-networking of reconnaissance and combat units at all level of command, the target information can be transmitted to the central command in a real-time manner. Compared to the conventional artillery units, the digitised artillery has a much shorter reaction time from target acquisition to firing.

The PLA researchers believe that the digitised army differs to the conventional army in that individual soldiers and weapon platforms are integrated into a smart network through digital command, control, communications, computer, intelligence (C4I) systems. By linking the ‘sensors’ and ‘shooters’ across all command level, down to single soldier and vehicle, the force will be able to enjoy free exchange of information between different units and command levels, high level of flexibility in organisational structure, as well as improved force coordination and situational awareness. Traditional boundaries between service arms and units will become blurred, and the whole force will be developed into an integrated reconnaissance & surveillance, command & control, power projection, and precision strike network.

A great amount research on army digitisation has been conducted since the late 1990s. In a PLA research paper published in 2003, the author claimed that the digitisation of the armed forces was inevitable in the future. The author suggested that the PLA should give priority to the development digitised equipments including smart weapon systems, basic digital infrastructures and their peripheral systems, and modernised C4I systems. The author also suggested that the PLA needs to recruit more well educated, high quality officers that understand modern management theories and information technology as well as military commanding, and to break the traditional barriers between difference service arms and units to form a wholly new type of force organisational structure.

Infantry Soldier System: PLA airborne force soldiers using helmet-mounted sight and weapon-mounted camera in urban combat exercise (Source: BQZS)

Equipment modernisation has been, and will always occupy the central stage in the PLA’s digitisation programme. A Chinese newspaper reported that the future development of the PLA digitised equipment will be focused on five main areas: digitised communications system, reconnaissance and intelligence system, command and control system, integrated vehicle information system, and combat network system. The PLA will also change its current organisational structure to reduce unit sizes and command levels. The future PLA digitised army will be smaller, smarter, and more flexible, with much enhanced information warfare capability.

The PLA researchers has also been pointing out that digitisation is not the solution to all problems the PLA is facing. Digitised army, still in its early ages, also has its own weakness. The PLA believes that digitisation should not be used as the sole standard to measure its modernisation development. In the foreseeable future, conventional forces will still play a big part in the land battlefield. The PLA also realises that its current budget will not allow it to build an all digitised army, so it must explore how to combine the digitised and conventional forces to achieve the combat goal.

Nevertheless, the development of the PLA digitised army is still in its early stage. The current digitisation development of the PLA is limited and experimental. The PLA planners are facing a huge dilemma between spending more money on army digitisation and purchasing more conventional tanks and armoured vehicles for its still largely infantry-oriented ground forces. It can be expected that the future PLA ground forces will be predominantly conventional form, but its digitised element will gradually increase.

Digitised Armoured Troops: The PLA has been experimenting digitised armoured troops concept (Source: CCTV footage)