Is the PLA's main Ground Force modernisation phase complete?

PLAN is operating in North East Indian Ocean, wants to Cooperate with Brazil. Then you're nearly around the whole world.

antiterror13 said:

It puzzles me ... why China needs world coverage for it's compass system.

Asia Pacific coverage is the most important one for China

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Although China's immediate goal is to dominate Asia, its ultimate goal is to challenge the US and dominate the world. I don't think anyone doubts that.

Whether China can achieve this goal is a different story, but there is nothing wrong with setting an ambitious goal. Naponeon said any soldier who doesn't want to become a general is not a good soldier.

Compass is also a commercial system as well as a military system just like GPS. It cannot have partial coverage. If your navy uses it, it must be Global. If you want your Airlines to use it, it must be Global and if you want to offer your friends and Allies an alternative to GPS it must cover them wherever those countries are.

vesicles said:

Although China's immediate goal is to dominate Asia, its ultimate goal is to challenge the US and dominate the world. I don't think anyone doubts that.

Whether China can achieve this goal is a different story, but there is nothing wrong with setting an ambitious goal. Naponeon said any soldier who doesn't want to become a general is not a good soldier.

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Maybe not so much as dominating the world militarily, but also dominating the world in other civilian sectors. By developing a worldwide coverage, it can also be a great move for telecommunication sector whereby China could use these to penetrate other nations' teleco and it is a growing market there, because everyone is going into information technology and information transfer technology.

Many of the things that we saw in development worldwide had dual use, like GPS, Glonass and now China's Beidou system. And they are pretty important in civilian sector as much as militarily and would most definitely break the monopoly that was once held by the US.

Whatever China's "goal", if their military adversary can count on global gps, China also has to have this available. China has to be able to strike where its adversary "must defend", or else it is a one-sided battle.

I have a more specific question which is to what degree is the PLA infantry mechanized?

With some googling on the most common IFVs/APCs of the PLA I got the following numbers:
WZ551 x 1200
Type 63 x 2000?
Type 86 (BMP-1 clone/mod) x 1000?
Type 89 x 1000
ZSD97 x ???

I do not count the ZSL2000 and ZBD2000 since they are for airborne and marine forces respectively, not the main ground forces.

Anyone want to guesstimate to fill in the blanks?

Whatever the unknown numbers turn out to be, most likely the PLA is still sorely lacking in frontline IFVs/APCs since practically everything is obsolete (except the ZSD97) and most are underarmored from the start.

Ok .. now China' defence budget will increase by 12.7% or roughly $10B more than in 2010 ... it equals to roughly total defence budget of Taiwan or Iran.

I predict this extra $$$ will be used to purchase more 052C++, Varyag, J-10B, Yuan+, 095, and Type-99 and more training and exercise

anybody ?

antiterror13 said:

anybody ?

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It's kind of redundant to predict case by case what it the increased budget will be used for... Just increased R+D and procurement in all service arms, and maybe increasing the pay for servicemen as well.

Majority of the expenses are spent on dailly expenditures and maintenance fees. PLA is too big, even if every one of them grab a burger, it would costs in the tens of millions. Unlike Israel, even if every gun gets broken and have to be replaced, it would still not cost that much