the corner
New Member
pics of Zhurihe D
but how to upload？
but how to upload？
PLA "Stride-2014" Military Exercise
- Thread starter Phoenix_Rising
- Start date
Phoenix_Rising
Junior Member
16GA's 68Brig. has plenty of secondhand 99 from "the Emperor Army（38GA）”, but the infantry still riding 63 APC.
OPFOR ECM made units of 68Brigade have to communicate by runners. They split up to releaf threat from above. 99s led the charge to turn the fight into CQB, they made it with heavy armor after tons of losses. Now, OPFOR's advantage on accuracy, air and C4ISR were gone as well as range and frontline, the battlefield was in 100% chaos, then madness began…
1. 2 strike battalions, after losing 70% of personnel and assets, re-organized into a company and resumed their assult. That was really mindblowing……
2. Bayonets-on! Not only soldiers&officers, but also runners, cookers, etc.
3. A company shutted the attack took by an OPFOR enhanced battalion. Red soldiers held dynamite, hid in foxholes, then, rolled/crawled into the bottom of moving OPFOR tanks.
4. Brigade commander KIA, commissar took the lead, then staff leader, then artillery reignment commander……Eventually, the vice-chief of political officer was in charge. the remain crewman of 1st armor battalion took MGs from their damaged vehicles and provided supressing fire for the assulting friendly infantry.
5. Critical attack. 3 men form an encircled red squad took a suicide bayonet charge in order for others to escape. The remain of this squad didn't flew, instead, they sneaked deep behind the OPFOR line. They threw an AT-gerenade to a van before got wiped out. Then, the judge declared that OPFOR's front command was no longer functioning. The vice-chief PO mentioned previously detected the OPFOR's weakenning immediately, took the final charge.
In summary: The OPFOR was like wired, the red force was like psyco…
Wolfie, Nail! Hit! Head!
Spot on, its about creating a modern professional army, that is more than simply very well drilled.
It must most surely be concentrating on the seemingly conflicting twin tracks of both autonomous action and also the ability to rebuild effective C&C in wake of a catastrophic loss of same.
The aims are definitely about allowing even the worst attack to knock you off balance or for you to lose situational awareness for any prolonged period of time. It must also be about ensuring that whatever has happened to you is communicated in full detail back up the line.
Thank you also to Phoenix for a lot of fascinating insight.
Sounds like a lot of resourcefulness, grit, and sacrifice throughout the entire force that provided results. More important than the results is that they demonstrated the mindset of being willing to go the distance, try different things, with their goals in mind.
Thank you very much.
Even though it was just an excercise, it still looks like the PLA hasnt lost their figthing spirit and morale.
If they replicated this on a real battlefield, the PLA would be a terrifying foe indeed!
Doombreed
Junior Member
Yeah... Hate to be a party pooper but this sure look like a dog and pony show to me.
Firstly, the political message. China on the receiving end of nuclear and NBC attacks. Great setup. Everyone always roots for the underdog. Not that good of a story if it’s just the red force steam rolling the blue force. I’ll also let yourselves figure out the subtle political message underneath, as I understand such discussion is haram on this forum.
Secondly, there are far more realistic ways to drill chaotic battle condition, initiative, and tactical leadership than this setup. What’s the goal here? Is it a field ex? Was it to drill and train the common everyday soldiers and commanders in their craft in realistic conditions? If so, what happened to the 70% of the soldiers who were casualties in the first hour? Did they return to base? Did they join in the pack march humping gear? If anything, this would’ve been a good excise for the medical corps more than anyone else. What did the grunts gain from this?
Thirdly, just look at the highlighted parts in the second quote above. Reads like one of those old school Chinese revolutionary epics. It has absolutely no value from a modern military training point of view. It’s heavy in political message and light in substance. And look at the last quote above, I think it’s done a sterling job at propagating that message.
If China wants a modern military, she should do away with these dog and pony shows and drill combined arms warfare, communication and integration between units, and hell, throw your grunts in the actual field for a month doing actual grunt things. Not acting out Banzai charge fantasies for high command.
Last edited:
Blackstone
Brigadier
Baby steps.
You have to remember that this is essentially a World War 3 scenario - not one of your 'modern wars' where you can play with your high-tech weapons and drone-kill people from back home while eating pizza.
I want to see how a modern army is going to face an overwhelming enemy who isnt holding themselves back in trying to kill you with everything in his arsenal.
You have two choices here:
1. Surrender.
2. Fight on.
PLA chose the latter.
Simple as that.
It would have been even less of an excercise, looking from your perspective, when the REDFOR just decide to f*ck it and give up. Instead, they decided to take the fight to the enemy and charge them in melee, so that their superior firepower in distance can be negated. Actually a very straightforward and simple tactic, as used during the Korean War as well, when the PVA was faced with the overwhelming firepower superiority of the UN force, while having nothing comparable on their own side.
Actually, this is why my previous comment about how this excercise's outcome would change if the PLA had more high-tech weapons, such as the HJ-12 sino-javelin, NLOS missiles, more drones, more air-power etc. If the PLA brigade in question had these things, then they wouldnt need to suicide charge the enemy anymore, but try for a more symmetric kind of warfare relying on their high-tech systems.
If a western army that was as bad equipped as that Chinese brigade did an excercise like this, I am sure they would arrive at the same conclusion and attempt to suicide charge the enemy as well.
Or maybe they will just give up the moment they cant have their precious air-superiority anymore, since this seems to be the more likely choice for the more humanitarian and liberal minded western armies that are comfortable and complecent with decades of essentially stomping defenseless and incompetent sand-people into the ground. Sorry to be so brash.
? If the PLA were only training with these kind of scenarios then I'd understand your issue, but the entire point of these exercises is to throw brigades into the deep end and see who drowns and who swims. The entire point is to see how they perform in doomsday scenarios. Also, the fact that it was completely unscripted and gave commanders vast autonomy is also a good thing.
And yes, Phoenix rising may have translated the text rather enthusiastically (or maybe the original article was simply phrased in a way which is propaganda-ish, but that is the case for virtually ALL reports of PLA exercises), but that doesn't mean the original exercise occurred in such a dramatic or scripted or whatever way.
Frankly the idea that these exercises are set up for a political message is ridiculous. Can we seriously anyway it is unrealistic for the PLA to get into a situation where they are facing a technologically superior enemy with air superiority, and with an array of NBC weapons? Give me a break.
So I can understand why you might want to see more combined arms and modern tactics as well, but it is entirely wrong for you to believe there is no place for training in scenarios where you are going up against an OPFOR with far more resources than you. That is not a political exercise, that is the reality the PLA faces.
---
And I laugh when you say "it is not a good story if it is red force steam rolling blue force" — because if an exercise did occur with an easy red victory, then someone will probably say the PLA aren't being realistic in their exercise. Or, if the results of the exercise were closer cut, then someone would probably say they deliberately set it up so it would be a more exciting story for people to read.
Frankly, I'm not sure how you think there is a "good story" in the fact that blue force has won over red force virtually every time.
Last edited:
Doombreed
Junior Member
You know, there's a reason why other modern militaries don't run this kind of scenarios. Because it's inherently unrealistic.
When other military run war games, there's always a measureable objective that you want to test or train. I.e. I want to see if the two mechanised brigades can manoeuvre and rendezvous with each other under electronic black out and constant air attacks. So you force march them 80km and create the testing environment for them that suits. At the end, they either can or cannot RV at the right place at the right time. And you can then take lessons from that. Verifiable results.
Whether your soldiers would perform suicide attacks is not something that you can independently test under normal circumstances. You can bet your ass that if Saddam ran a “doomsday” scenario for his Republican Guards before the invasion of Iraq, they would’ve fought to the last man too. I bet there will be a few bayonet charges against Abrams also. But as we all know, reality is quite different.