PLA going digital

While digital technology allows commanders of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) to electronically monitor borders round the clock, cooks in the barracks conjure up tasty dishes using recipes from e-books through computers in the kitchen.

Electronic equipments like computers seem to be omnipresent ever since the Chinese army started its IT revolution in the 1990s.

Intelligent command and control systems have been installed in remote border posts along the 2,600-km-long seacoasts and land borders in south China's Guangxi Zhuang, vastly improving information management over the huge territory.

According to the district's political department, sentries and border patrols are equipped with intelligent IC cards and electronic sentinels function 24 hours a day.

Lu Guangyou, who works as an instructor at the Faka Mountain sentry post, said conditions were more sophisticated than he had expected when he arrived in July 2005. The PLA had set up a local area network (LAN) in 2004 and military personnel could access it at any time.

"Soldiers used to pack pans and bowls into their luggage when they went out on patrol," said junior military officer Yang. "Today they carry laptop computers, digital cameras and GPS devices."

Soldiers out on patrol swipe their IC cards as they move across the terrain, funnelling information back to headquarters. Digital visual and audio communication technologies link headquarters to command teams that may be thousands of kilometres away.

Deng, a company commander, said that the main passes in the Guangxi military region have been equipped with monitors, alarms, infrared night vision cameras, enabling 24-hour real-time monitoring.

The real-time surveillance system has improved the army's ability to deal with emergencies, he said.

According to Yang, information management has improved the quality of border patrol and also had an impact on logistics, rest and recuperation, and that eternal friend of the soldier - a square meal.

With most regiments in Guangxi far from towns, soldiers used to travel a long way just to buy a tube of toothpaste.

But in January 2007, an online shopping site appeared on the district's military LAN — and now a soldier staring out at the hillside in a remote border post can simply click on a website to whistle up his favourite brand of rice cakes.

According to Kuang Zhiwen, political commissar of the border regiment, shopping transport costs of almost 1,000 yuan ($130) a week have been cut to less than 300 yuan because army vehicles now truck goods in twice a week to posts stationed along the borders.

"Shopping online is convenient and fair, we know exactly how the money is being spent," said a soldier.

Meanwhile, the regiment has worked with the National University of Defence Technology to set up "an online menu system". A range of tasty morsels can be ordered from a menu on the website for delivery to a border post way out in the Guangxi hills.

On the system's homepage, cooking tips, recipes and other bits of culinary know-how are available as e-books and video clips. Kitchen staff looking for a new taste treat can consult these resources when they order their food online.

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China's military tests sophisticated real-time data system
BEIJING, Sept 19 (AFP) Sep 19, 2007

The Chinese military has begun a two-day drill testing a system that provides commanders real-time battlefield data, signalling the continued modernisation of the nation's massive armed forces.
The exercise is part of an ambitious effort to improve military information collection systems, one of the main shortfalls of the otherwise rapidly modernising People's Liberation Army, the Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

"We are trying to catch up with the advanced countries. It's a very complicated system, as it involves every military unit," Xu Guangyu, a retired Chinese general, told AFP.

"I think we need at least ten years to catch up with the world's most sophisticated nations," he said.

The drill, dubbed "North Sword 0709", was carried out at the Zhurihe training base in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the nation's largest military training field, Xinhua said.

Each of the 2,000 participating soldiers is equipped with an electronic device constantly beaming information back to headquarters about battlefield conditions, Xinhua reported.

This allows commanding officers to have precise information at any time about ammunition levels, food consumption and casualties among units under their command, according to the agency.

"The system could let us know the exact conditions our troops are under in combat... and when we should support them with logistics," said Zhang Jixiang, a senior officer taking part in the manoeuvre.

This particular effort targets an area of modern military technology aimed at enhancing what is known in the specialist literature as "battlefield awareness," said Robert Karniol, a Bangkok-based independent military analyst.

"The better commanders know what's happening on the battlefield, the better they can apply their resources, whether in people or in firepower or in mobility or in logistics support," he said.

No outside observer knows for sure when China decided to improve its capabilities in this particular field.

However, it is widely accepted that the first Gulf War of early 2001, showing off the immense superiority of the tech-savvy US armed forces, was a milestone in Chinese thinking on the issue.

"You can say with some certainty that the first Gulf War accelerated the process," said Karniol.

China's 2.3-million-strong military has seen its 2007 budget rise 17.8 percent from last year, and is now going for quality rather than quantity.

It is focusing considerable attention on the need to adopt high technology as means to enhance its battle efficiency, apparently with some success.

Recently, reports suggested that hackers from the People's Liberation Army had caused a shutdown of a computer system serving the office of US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Similar hacker attacks linked to the Chinese military have been reported by other western countries as well.

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