New Speacial forces pictures

Man, is everything bad about the PLA prapaganda to you guy?

But this story on this one is true. It was reported by an offcial Chinese mainland news agency.

So HA!

Also I remeber seeing that in the news section of the Chinese offical-ish website, sina.com. So it should be true right, I mean doesnt your government monitor all the news or something =/ (<.<) (>.>)

The arm band does look stupid. You can find a lot of these type of pictures on PLA exercises, some pictures make you really wonder why they do this? For instance, I once saw a picture of PLA marine troops wearing orange vests during exercises. It is just stupid.

Things in China is very different, for instance, the military exercises are not just exercises, in some situations, they are also shows for media, for high rank officers to watch, and for propagada purposes. If you want to get serious about these pictures, you may get youself a lot of questions, such as "Why this guy wave a big red flag in the battlefield? Why these people conduct a WWII style human wave charge?" Trust me, they may just do this for propagada purpose because it looks good on picture. It is sad and really bad, but in many situations, it is true.

green beret said:

See their uniform is on the ok side, but that arm band, man they look like little beacons.

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PLA propaganda is not necessarily bad, it does boosts the morale of soldiers and people. If you want to do serious analysis on PLA's capability, PLA propaganda tends out to be a very good source if you can decode the messages behind those plain boring official statements.

green beret said:

Man, is everything bad about the PLA prapaganda to you guy?

But this story on this one is true. It was reported by an offcial Chinese mainland news agency.

So HA!

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Shows, shows. PLA banned any color other than green camo during sino-vietnam war already. those red star on those caps are like sniper targets. in PLA there are two type of combat uniforms. so PLA banned any color like red to be weared on soldiers' uniforms DURING battle


1. "shows" camo uniforms
Example: the PLA SOF' s "show" uniforms have a big ass red insignia on their arm.

2. battle camo uniforms
Example: the PLA SOF's insignia will be green. almost can't be read from 2 meters away.

As for the Big ass red armband... it will easies for a media to spot and see where they are, their rank....

If you see some older sino-vienam war picutres. you will see no red armband or other "show" craps here in those "generals, look at us" excersice.

As for the paratrooper things, I personally believe it, but that is how we found problems. right?

petty officer1 said:

As for the paratrooper things, I personally believe it, but that is how we found problems. right?

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I was kinda totally disappointed though. I have been following stories about Chinese paratroopers for a while, since I want to become a paratrooper myself, I want to learn what their paratroopers are like. But when I found out about the story though, boy that was a big let down. they would be lucky if they survive the landing.

As for the arm-band, you are right, at least you definitely should be right. I was thinking, what kind f moron general would make his soldiers wear red armbands in combat?

PLA paratrooper is not bad at all. the excerise you talk about probably happened to US when they first time air drop a IFV out a sky, but it is so long ago, like 1940s.

My point is, porblems during excerise shows leadership what the porblem is and correct it. If you watch PLA tactic in the 1980 their folks have WAY, WAY more problems than today. that means they are improving!

all is just time....

yeah the armored personnel carrier too.

but I was talking about how they issued weapons and ammos to their soldiers after they landed. In sinodefence a few years back when it first started I remember seeing pictures of Chinese paratroopers jumping out of airplanes with full combat gears but no guns. at first I thought it is a practice jump, but thats untill I heard about the news this year. so the problem had lasted for what 4 to 5 years?

And trust me, we jump out of airplanes with full comabt gears AND gun and ammos here in the U.S.

green beret said:

yeah the armored personnel carrier too.

but I was talking about how they issued weapons and ammos to their soldiers after they landed. In sinodefence a few years back when it first started I remember seeing pictures of Chinese paratroopers jumping out of airplanes with full combat gears but no guns. at first I thought it is a practice jump, but thats untill I heard about the news this year. so the problem had lasted for what 4 to 5 years?

And trust me, we jump out of airplanes with full comabt gears AND gun and ammos here in the U.S.

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Well to be truely certain why they did this we must find out the rationale of the leadership during the exercises. In Australia soldiers are often given their ammo after they have arrived in the AO. The reason for this is because in some exercises you are still ina civilian area whilst traveling to the AO. It is illegal to carry any sort of ammunition outside designated military areas. So therefore it is not unexpected that the PLA may have similar laws which address these similar situations.

Regarding the missing IFV during the paradrop. Well as u should know... shit happens all the time in the military and as mentioned before this is where we can find problems. However it is also good exercise for the men on the ground because they will need to develop their skills on adapting to such situations. It is much more important to get the soldiers to repond to changing and unexpected situations than having everything going right.

just read the news article again, appearly the Russian paratroopers that jumped with the Chinese did it with full combat gear and weapons and ammos. so nothing to argue about there anymore.

but I dunno much about international law. but if a military force took part in an exercise in foriegn soil, doesnt they have to obey the local laws too?

Personally, I'm not a big fan of paratroopers via air drop. The air drop process scatter the men and equipment over a wide area. Helicopter insertion is much more precise. The last major paratrooper deployement in actual combat was US invasion of Grenada in 1983, and I think it was said that ~50% of the forces (US army rangers) were scattered by the drop.

The bright arm bands and rock climbing photos are staged PR events. It's kind of like inviting visitors to see your troops hopping over an obstacle course and has very little to do with actual combat op. If it had been an actual combat op, I doubt they'd have invited the press, least some stupid reporter like Geraldo Rivera starts drawing map to show your position and battle plan to the enemy on broadcast TV.

In today's battlefield, by the time that your infantry moves foward, the enemy force has already been mostly destroyed or scattered by your air power and tanks/artillery. Infantry will be used to flush out pockets of resistance and deal with occupation. The type of warfare that they need be trained for is urban combat against irregulars. The Israelis are very good at it, and the US is slowly learning through Iraqi occupation experience. I suspect the Russians learned a great deal through Chechenya.