CHINA-PLA: ATTACK HELICOPTERS TRAIN FOR URBAN WARFARE
|
National Interest cited a recent PLA Daily report on November 24, 2018 as saying that Chinese pilots are training for urban warfare. It added this suggests that the People's Liberation Army is reorienting itself toward a different kind of warfare. The PLA Daily article describes an exercise conducted by the Army Aviation brigade of the PLA 79th Group Army, deployed in northeast China. The PLA Daily article said “The unit’s Party committee recognized that there are many buildings in urban areas and, more than that, they are not evenly distributed. Both the electromagnetic environment and terrain make deep assaults difficult, and serve to better temper the units’ actual combat capability.” The article said that Chinese attack helicopter pilots were surprised to find that fighting in cities was not like fighting in the Manchurian plains. When one of the pilots “was about to transmit information, his screens suddenly showed interference and an uneven signal, eventually losing contact with the command post,” said PLA Daily. It said an aviation battalion commander said “The electromagnetic environment in urban areas is complicated. It is very easy for battlefield awareness to be reduced with just a little interference—and it is very difficult to gather and transmit battlefield intelligence!” Some helicopters in the exercise had to be tasked with functioning as flying relay stations, to retransmit signals from other helicopters. Narrow urban spaces meant that helicopters could only operate in small groups of two or three aircraft, rather than massed attack helicopter strikes. According to the PLA Daily the brigade learned to “alter its routes through different districts according to the terrain and change its unit composition according to tactical requirements, cooperate in researching combined tactical issues, and strengthen training in electromagnetic spectrum management according to natural and man-made environmental factors”. “They also strengthened their ability to innovate tactics under the new system, and implemented courses in low-altitude navigation, search and rescue, etc.”
(Comment: Since armies train for the type of battlefield they expect to fight in, the People’s Liberation Army appears to be girding itself for street fighting.)
|