Infantry Combat Equipment (non-firearm): Vests, Body Armor, NVGs, etc.
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The entrepreneurial ingenuity of the Chinese people are unmatched in this world.
In the firearms thread (or the new assault rifle family thread), someone mentioned how pla commanders carry this belief that optics will break in the middle of combat or something along the lines like that. While it isn’t the most ridiculous thing we have heard from them, it is still irritating as the West demonstrated that well built optics and other accessories can easily survive in harsh environments.
There are plenty of units that run optics and accessories. But mostly they are PAP not PLA.
Accessories (like red dots, grips, IR pointers, lights) on rifles are bonuses, not necessities. Necessity is the soldier's proficiency with gunfighting, understanding of tactical maneuvers, and their air and logistical support.
I am not saying that red dots or 3.5x ACOGs are not useful, they are fantastic, I run them on my guns, they help me shoot a lot quicker and a lot more accurate at distance, but these items won't change the course of a battle, especially a modern one. I can run my ACOG on my rifles all day long, but that will not help me defeat a drone or help me survive a 155mm barrage.
In Operation Red Wing (from the movie Lone Survivor), 19 Navy seals were killed and 1 chinook was downed, and all this was done by a small group of Taliban fighters (Marcus lied about the number of opponents, it is likely that their 4 man Navy seal squad was wiped by a Taliban team of around 8-10 people, maybe a bit more, but not a team of 100 Taliban. Even the dude who rescued Marcus said that that claim was vastly overexaggerated, the Seals only fought against a handful of Taliban fighters). These Navy seal dudes had everything there is to a weapon you can think of, Magpul finish, grips, IR laser pointers, ACOG, Aim points, variable zoom optics. Did that help them beat Taliban fighters that run 50 year old Type 56s and RPGs? Not really. Without support from gunships, Navy seals got slaughtered by the Taliban, simply because the Taliban know the terrain so much better than the Seals and they are probably a lot more used to maneuvering in the mountains.
Although the US is not winning the war in Afghanistan, they sure beat Taliban's ass whenever there is a fight. What is the key determinant of American military power superiority? That red dot on their M4s? The KAC vertical grip? That BCM pistol grip? DBAL-I2? I do not think so, I think A-10 CAS, drone support, logistical support, GPS and arty support are key.
I've said this before and I will say it again, do not let video games and operator movies create illusions. Accessories on guns definitely help to make them run better, but they don't change much in the course of a modern war. Besides, they are expensive as hell. Go on Surefire website and check for yourself how much a light cost, $600 USD can allow me to buy a used Type-97 rifle here in Canada.
Accessories on guns are a advantage only in a handful of specific conditions, and even in those conditions, they are not all that useful anyways if you are a shitty operator.
Furthermore, Spec Ops is not SWAT... They may do hostage rescue and CT occasionally, but they are not SWAT. War is more than CQB and CT, and spec ops is only special in the type of mission they conduct, Spec Ops soldiers are not superhuman, nor should they always be equipped with decked out Xmas trees, they are just assigned with missions that are unsuitable for normal military units. Although the PLA is definitely very conservative in their small arms ideology, the Western spec ops community is not going in the right direction with their heavy emphasis on gunfighting and gimmicks. Spec ops is not SWAT.... (actually, most Chinese SWAT operators run decked out QBZ-95s and Type-79s, those are pretty sweet)
Adding one more point. Special operators usually have their own pick of equipment. Doesn’t have to be standard issue.
Any sort of publicized photo is highly staged, so it might have just been a photo shoot with “off the shelf” equipment.
I know this is an equipment thread, I just wanted to add to @EdgeOfEcho's remarks. The next conflict the PLA could realistically be seeing is a conventional one - think along the lines of marines storming a beachfront/harbor in the South China Sea, Ranger-like-units conducting mountain patrols on the LAC (should it ever escalate into a gunfight of course!), or just your regular army clearing out cities urban warfare style. Under these circumstances, tactics and strategy decides who comes out on top on the battlefield, rather than who has the most specced out rifle.
I'm not saying Spec Ops doesn't have a role to play, but I believe the bread and butter of Spec Ops units lies in unconventional/guerrilla warfare, or the securing of strategic targets (whether it be high valued individuals, or a geographical location like a power plant). As such I think Spec Ops operators should be reserved for these roles, or to augment conventional units.
If you look up the citations/recounts of JSOC operators that were recipients of the Medal of Honor, well these operators would often find themselves literally in close quarters fist-fights with insurgents... Sure NVGs might've helped, but there was nothing their kitted out rifles would do to make a difference. Sometimes it just comes down to who has the bigger pair of balls!
I'm not saying Spec Ops doesn't have a role to play, but I believe the bread and butter of Spec Ops units lies in unconventional/guerrilla warfare, or the securing of strategic targets (whether it be high valued individuals, or a geographical location like a power plant). As such I think Spec Ops operators should be reserved for these roles, or to augment conventional units.
If you look up the citations/recounts of JSOC operators that were recipients of the Medal of Honor, well these operators would often find themselves literally in close quarters fist-fights with insurgents... Sure NVGs might've helped, but there was nothing their kitted out rifles would do to make a difference. Sometimes it just comes down to who has the bigger pair of balls!
NVGs are a huge force multiplier, don't underestimate them.
I'm not saying NVGs had no role to play, and I most certainly wasn't downplaying their importance. Rather it is the skill/execution of strategy/experience/courage that decides the quality of the operator/soldier, rather than whether their rifle has the latest gadgets and gizmos attached to it. I mean sure NVGs might've given the JSOC operators the advantage in seeing insurgents in the dark (as you said, a force multiplier), but NVGs didn't give them the physical strength to come out on top in hand-to-hand combat, literally choke and restraining insurgents, which led to their nomination of the Medal of Honor now did it? That came from experience, strategy, training, and more importantly a massive set of balls. SOCOM seemingly stresses operator readiness (training and field experience) over whether their Tier One operators have the latest NVG models (many operators have in fact gone back to using old school NVGs rather than the panoramic NVGs depicted in Zero Dark Thirty).
Anyways I'm digressing massively from the thread topic. Despite what Call of Duty depicts, the upcoming war the PLA might face will more than likely be a conventional one (think storming the beaches of Normandy) rather than unconventional (fighting the Vietcong or Taliban guerrillas). That's certainly been depicted by the videos released that show conventional units fastroping off helicopters and charing off hovercrafts onto the battlefield. When that happens, tactics and strategy (along with strong CAS, logistics, and drone support) will be the biggest force multiplier, rather than who has the coolest most specced out gun.
Agreed on the attachments and guccied out rifles having little impact on war. However, having a scope and maybe a suppressor can at least contribute to the flexibility in tactics and increases chances of survival. I can understand regular infantry or even marines or paratroopers not having scopes and suppressors. However reconaissance and spec ops units are more expensive and time consuming to train. Unless the PLA is spending most of the money on training rather than on scopes and other accessories, scopes and suppressors should at minimum be issued to the spec ops and recon units.