Due to its location (devoid of any international land borders) and the extensive transportation networks within its boundaries, the Jinan MR is positioned as the PLA’s strategic reserve force. This mission was demonstrated in the response to the May 2008 earth-quake in Wenchuan, when numerous MR ground force units were deployed across several provincial boundaries to support disaster relief efforts. Further-more, as illustrated in the two transregional exercises emanating from the region in 2008, Army forces can be used to reinforce military operations in other parts of the country.
Beginning in late August, 砺兵-2008 (Sharpening Troops-2008) was the first transregional exercise of the season. Only a month after the 58th Light Mechanized Brigade of the 20th Group Army in Jinan MR returned from the Wenchuan disaster relief mission, it moved by rail and road to the Zhurihe CATTB.11 Once there, the brigade acted as the “Red Army” against a “Blue Army” comprised of an armored regiment from the
Beijing MR. The brigade was reinforced with an elec-tronic countermeasures unit, more than 10 helicopters from the Jinan MR 1st Army Aviation Regiment (sub-ordinate to the 54th Group Army), and PLAAF assets, including both an airborne mechanized infantry unit (probably company-size) and fighter support. The month-long exercise included over 5,200 personnel from both MRs and the PLAAF. Fuel for the brigade was provided through coordination by the group army and Jinan MR staffs with the Beijing MR Joint Logistics Department, which then tasked local units to provide support. Reportedly, over the course of the exercise the brigade consumed up to “400 tons of gasoline and diesel fuel of various grades, which represent[ed] 60%
of all the war materiel . . . supplied in the exercise.”12 The force-on-force maneuver element of the exercise was unscripted and included parachute delivery of airborne infantry combat vehicles and personnel. Over 100 military leaders, representatives, and observers from 36 countries were invited to attend the final day of the exercise at Zhurihe.13 In summarizing Sharpen-ing Troops-2008 (砺兵-2008), the exercise deputy direc-tor noted the experimental nature of this training: “the multi-service and multi-arm joint training implies the transition from the research-centric stage to the nor-mal test-oriented stage.”14
In September, during 联合-2008 (Joint-2008), the 138th Motorized Infantry Brigade of the 26th Group Army in the Jinan MR moved from Yantai (烟台) in the Weifang (潍坊) Coordination Zone in Shandong to a landing area near Dalian, Liaoning (辽宁大连). The amphibious lift for the exercise was provided by some 10 PLAN amphibious ships with PLAAF air cover.15 In total, more than 5,000 troops from all three ser-vices participated in the 5-day exercise.16 During the
phase in which vehicles were loaded onto ships, and while en route to the beachhead, the “Red” force was harassed by “Blue Army” naval and air units using surface vessels, attack aircraft, and electronic warfare.
These attacks resulted in the execution of joint defen-sive actions by “Red” ground, naval, and air forces.
The exercise culminated with an amphibious landing and inland assault supported by army aviation and special operations elements. Integrated joint logistics, including civilian food, vehicle repair, and medical support, was emphasized at all stages of the exercise.
During this exercise, the 26th Group Army com-mander was the overall exercise director in charge of a “joint campaign formation” (联合战役军团) with a subordinate “joint tactical formation” (联合战术兵团), sometimes translated as “joint tactical corps,” formed by the 138th Brigade headquarters.17 Under this sort of command relationship, Navy and Air Force officers were present in the group army and brigade tactical operations centers to command their services’ support through “distributed embedded”-style (分布嵌入式) command, and were not there simply to perform li-aison functions. The PLA newspaper, Jiefangjun Bao, highlighted the experimental nature of this type of command relationship and the need for further work to solve problems discovered in practice:
This kind of joint command model was attempted in the “联合-2006” [“Joint Operations-2006”] and “联 合-2007” [“Joint Operations-2007”] live troop exercises that followed, and although it reduced the conflicts with the existing command systems, and it had a defi-nite jointness, the one flaw was that the three-service arm tactical formations had relatively lax coordination with each other, which weakened the degree of integration of the joint operations. . . . After several years of actual practice, the Weifang Military Training Coordination Zone’s
three-service arm commanders recognize more and more clearly that the PLA’s joint training effort is still in its “initial stage”, and whether in ideological concepts and formation systems or in command methods, there are a lot of issues that still need to be resolved, and he who is anxious to be successful will, on the contrary, only have more haste and less speed.18 [emphasis added]
As can be seen from the transregional exercises in 2006 and 2008, the first examples of these new-style, joint operations were relatively small (up to about 5,000 personnel at most), but over time the opera-tions became increasingly complex. The transregional aspect was a new wrinkle added to the other opera-tional methods (command and control, coordination of multiple service actions, joint logistics support, etc.), which were under experimentation in other PLA ground force exercises. In the following years, trans-regional exercises became much larger and longer in duration.
LARGER, MORE COMPLEX EXERCISES IN 2009