Pentagon shake in their boots!

Abuse was a grave problem in the Soviet Army and the legacy of ´dedovcina´is haunting the Russian Army even after transition towards a volunteer force. During the late 80's/early 90's between 1500 and 3000 recruits were beaten to death or forced to commit suicide by second year soldiers and sometimes also NCO's or even regular officers. Of course under those grisly circumstances true ´esprit de corps´could not develop and consequently the combat capabilities needed for fighting a high tech war were thoroughly insufficient.

The situatiuon regarding the PLA is totally different:
1. The PLA was never a typical conscript army and since the early 90's has been a de facto professional volunteer force.
2. PLA recruits are tightly screened and tested since PLA can afford to choose. Only the best regarding physical and intellectual capabilities will get a pass. Housing, medical treatment, food and even payment (at least since the late 90's) are quite decent for chinese standards even for a grunt.
3. The ´esprit de corps´of the PLA is consolidated on a high level and most experts agree that the soldier-officer/officer-soldier relationship in PLA is well disciplined, calm and highly professional. Interestingly all PLA soldiers and officers in particular enjoy the highest prestige and respect by their fellow citizens in China and regularly opinion polls show that the PLA commands the highest respect of all state institutions in China (way in front of police, CPC...).

Creating false parallels must lead to false assumptions and the structures of the PLA and the former SA are simply different and not inherently similar. (Regarding morale: The Vietnamese Peoples Army was indeed a soviet carbon copy and they intentionally declined to copy the PLA scheme but their discipline and morale did not suffer from ´soviet´problems.)

Gollevainen said:

Using examples like Korea is bit irrelevant to this issue. If to be frank China managed to draw tie due its sheer numerical strenght,

Click to expand...

Golly again you keep talking generalities and demonstrate very poor command of information. I ask you, in 1950, how many PLA troops in Korea? How many UN troops in Korea?

You also never give source for the mountains of half truthful information you try to spread. ********

Gollevainen said:

I'm not talknig about pamflets, but the actual system itself. The most informative materials that have described it has not been "pamflets" but a real studies of chinese military structure and organisations which weren't anyway biased towards any point, didn't take a stance against which system was better and so on. I've made my assumptions based of what I know about the military systems in general. Warfighting is the same everytime people is involved, no matter what are their races or cultural differences. Certain rules applies to all situations. What sounds good in paper and more alarming what sounds politically correct in paper is not neecerically good in practise and its often found to be the opposite around.

Using examples like Korea is bit irrelevant to this issue. If to be frank China managed to draw tie due its sheer numerical strenght, not becouse of its dual-military leadership's superiority. In fact if the PLA would have been more flexible (the numberone thing that all complicated and cross-hieracy systems effectively supresses) it would have been able to throw out the UN troops...But this isen't thread about Korean war so lets leave it out of this, ok?

Click to expand...

What I am saying is the Chinese military system isn't contradict with general military systems. As for flexible, that's the No. 1 reason why PLA survived and succeeded. Western materials always describe their opponenets as less flexible, be it Japanese, Chinese, Russian or Germans.

By numerical strength, I think you did not count planes, artilleries, tanks, transport facilities, supplys and even people---- did you count south koreans?

Back to topic, this DoD report cited in the link posted by the OP can be summarised, like all the DoD reports came before it, into two lines "(insert country/organisation/Alliance here) is a threat to US security, so the military needs more funding."

And it amazes me how the US public actually buy that crap, Americans should realise that China is not a security threat to the US, nor is Russia, the EU, Iran, the Arabs, aliens, crab people, zombies Godzilla....

You also never give source for the mountains of half truthful information you try to spread.

Click to expand...

Source to my "halftruthful information"? How can I give sources from stuff that is not based on some text that I've read but to actual incidences and situations that I've come agross in real life. Like I said my obinion for this issue doesen't come from any seccond hand source that says that PLA's dual leadership is not as effective as simple single-leader system. My obinion is based solely to what I've learned and experienced myself. I try to think the various situations where exspecially the leadership was in question and to imagine how those situations would been done when applying to the organisational structure of PLA...and the result doesen't sound favorable for the dual-leadership doctrine.

Instead of throwing cheap comments like above, why not giving your own proofs and sources of the actual issue which is not Korea but the workability of the dual leadership/political leadership issue. Or more spesific, how can you know that it works if you don't understand how even the basic single-leadership non-politically lead military unit works?

Last time I gave extensive quotes from a study of the war with india, which gave credit to the commissar system. You shut me down if I remember correctly.

Does army experience equal good military judgement? Here's what you said:

Everybody who have shoot with the 12.7 mm AAA raise your hands? (WHy I'm not seeing anyones else hand raised other than mine? )

Anti-aricraft machineguns are not mented to be sniper-rifles, they are desighned from the outset to be inaccurate. For exampble NSV is designed to shoot each round to bit different location than the other, eg. creating sort of shotgun effect. Ín general AAA guns are not mented to hit the airbrone target at all, but to make supression barriers which the enemy arcrafts has to envade and outmanuvre in order not to get a hit.

Those who have never fired such a weapon I can assure you that you cannot hit anything smaller than single family house over the distance of 50 m.

Click to expand...

Here you tried to convince people one of the most ubiquitous heavy weapons in the world is 1) designed to be inaccurate and 2) has less effective range than a handgun, apparently because you didn't hit anything on an exercise.

You guys can get back on topic now.

On the issue of scores...

US 50,000 dead PRC 150,000-1,000,000+ depending on source who won?

the US can claim a victory becuase SK still exists.

Fishhead, if your abused in the US Army you have several channels you can go through to seek relief. JAG and the Chaplain are dutybound and outside of the chain of command, your own NCO's have their own chain that runs up to the First Seargents and from there to the Battalion Seargent Major who has the Commanders ear.

The CNN report is filler, the PLA has not taken any of the steps to make it a deployable army,neithe rhas the PLAN. Weapons fight wars but logistics win them. The PLA/PLAN does not have the lift capacity to fight even short wars very far from home. China's modernisation is alos being matched by its neighbors- India, mayalasia, Indonesia, Singapore have all deployed systems comparable to what China has.

The power projection tools China is building/taking possesion of are all aimed at a much different style of warfare than one involving ground troops, the target is obvious and it is not the US or Taiwan.

Aegis style warships and nuclear submarines and other related tools point directly at Japan who BTW is builkding the same type of systems. I think the PRC has concluded rightly that the US's willingness to remain the sole superpower is waning. Iraq has increased the "lets go home" pressure inside the US and the three way symbiotic relationship between the US/PRC/RoC means war over Taiwan is unlikely.

vs Japan however China faces a credible and dangerous threat, and an enemy who has not/will not come to grips with its past. With Japan openly moving to a more militant and active stance on the world stage China must act.

King_Comm said:

And it amazes me how the US public actually buy that crap, Americans should realise that China is not a security threat to the US, nor is Russia, the EU, Iran, the Arabs, aliens, crab people, zombies Godzilla....

Click to expand...

Why would that surprise you? It gives every American chance to be action hero.

This is no flame or off topic. It's the honest answer.

zraver it should be obvious to you and indeed to every American the PLA does not threaten United States. It is however the gravest possible threat to Taiwanese independence. That's China's target, not Hawaii. So you cannot say PLA is failing because it can't take Hawaii.

USA can claim victory against NK, not against PLA. Btw do you realize how many South Koreans died in that war? Does that count in your score?