PLAN textbook, Strongly suggested to all

Here's a guidebook made by US office of naval intelligence. Its made so that the USN personell would understand the roles and structures of PLAN for further encounters (didn't specify wheter peacful or the other )



Unlike some of you may think in advance this book doesen't posses any biased western believes of the PLANs capabilities, it just offers facts and information of the PLAN doctrines, theories, practice, structures, trainings, manning and personel systems. It's the most comprehensive litterature about chinese navy that I've personally have come across and I myself learned a lot of the important things behind the usual "light information" that is around PLAN.

This document doesen't contain data about ships and weapon systems, there's plenty of other sources for those. What it does is provides the tools to understand what is behind those weapons and enables you to understand the concepts and roles of various equipments and you might just figure what they are mented for...a skill or ability too often missing from too many of our members.

It's heavy text (144 pages in two rows of text) and no pictures, a real "schoolbook" so to speak and Gollevainen as a head teacher of SDF, expects all our participants to familirazes themself to it. It's the main material for the elementary course of "PLAN 1 to 1" and I will hold an examinations later in the spring

Very interesting - thank you, Golle.

Not a patch on Sinodefence.com, of course.

I'm finnaly starting to read things about the PLAN I have always wondered. I just read up a little on training...

Good Job by Golly finding this paper. And good job by the USN in publishing an unbiased view of the PLAN.

I wonder if the PLAN has the same type info on the USN..They probally do. they can just get it on line!

Later>>>>..I'm in love with this report..Oh hell yes.. It is awesome. It tells everything about the PLAN..Right down to the mess hall and recreation. It does lack a pay scale. Tomorrow I'm going to read a whole bunch of this..So Golly..I will be ready for the test.

You can never understand Chinese philosophy .Chinese has a tradional habit not to show the final weapon to enemy .They'll keep silence and pretend that they know nothing about you to let you have misunderstand about them .It is called " art of the war" .

Same here as Popeye. This gives you so much insight into the PLAN's thought process.

Initial Thoughts:
1. They really understand what they can and can't do, and what the must do. The doctrine section shows that.
2.The doctrine section also shows that the PLAN might have a hard time act on new ideas. There's like 10 steps to changing doctrine.
3. I like the training arrangement but it needs work. The men go through basic training then go to a unit where the get on the job training and additional specialized training there. On the one hand, this means they get a lot of real world experience and are built up to do their job from the beginning, learning from those who really do it. On the other hand it probably isn't as good as having an extra layer of specialized "classroom" training between basic and unit.

and it gives really good insigth to the PLA in general...that byrocratic hierarchy just gets my skin hair to rise....As a finnish soldier, i have given strong lessons that the armys capacity to succsee isent the factor of weapons but the skill of the officers in platoon to battalion level. Their innovativenes is the one that count in the tactical situation, and what I learned about the textbook, PLAN doesent allow much for that but emphasis the importance of doctrine and text-books....accompanied with the ridicilous douple leader system....

Bottom line on their method of training. There seems to be no flexablity. When all your conscripts train and seperate from the service the same time every year. How can they build a viable force? ..If a sailor, soilder or airmen. knows he's getting out in of the service in November..Why should he/she be motivated to work any harder or want to learn anymore in say September? I can't imangine being a senior NCO knowing that half my crew was leaving the service at the same time.

Personally I think the PLA in general needs to get rid of the conscript system or lengthen their service back to 4 years ..OR go with an all volunteer force. There are 1.3 billion people in China. That's plenty of young men & women to recruit from in that population pool.

In the report it says all PLAN ships return to port in November no matter what so the conscripts and NCO's that are leaving the service can seperate.

I read in the report that at night at sea the PLAN would anchor because they were not allowed to operate at night. This I already knew. I have to wonder how much night operations do they do now??? It's a really diffrent navy.

I have finished three sections with it(4,5,14). It was hard to make out the pros and cons with mose of their system and doctrine because I never really get involved with military. So I never could get the insights like popeye or Goll, but the qualitry of life was the only section I can completely understand. Very interesting indeed.

Bottom line on their method of training. There seems to be no flexablity. When all your conscripts train and seperate from the service the same time every year. How can they build a viable force? ..If a sailor, soilder or airmen. knows he's getting out in of the service in November..Why should he/she be motivated to work any harder or want to learn anymore in say September? I can't imangine being a senior NCO knowing that half my crew was leaving the service at the same time.

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Well this "sudden lack of motivation due the fact that your mornings are get low" is quite familiar to all us conscripts We call these guys Gona and you can recocknize a gona form normal soldier from lack of displine, exspecially when it comes to the codes and rules about how to wear your clothes...

But I'n pretty sure that like in all conscript armies, In china the training is focused on the early and middle parts of the conscription period. For example we had all the basic soldier training in the very begining, the formal and theoretical artillery training in the middle and the live-artilleryfiring and long and intessive field training in very late. (it was less than a months after the "forrest-time" was over to the discharge). Its no use to teach anything new to these "gonas" but the best way to keep the spirit up is find something meanigfull to do to them...unfortunatly our drill instructors did

bd popeye said:

I can't imangine being a senior NCO knowing that half my crew was leaving the service at the same time.

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"annual conscription and demobilization for one-half of conscripts during october and december" is what is says.

conscripts are 1/3rd of the navy, and oct+nov is 1/6th of the year. So they're rotating 1/6th the navy over 1/6th of the year..

In the report it says all PLAN ships return to port in November no matter what so the conscripts and NCO's that are leaving the service can seperate.

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It doesn't say that. It quoted one officer saying his ship returns to port to demobilize part of the crew.

I read in the report that at night at sea the PLAN would anchor because they were not allowed to operate at night. This I already knew. I have to wonder how much night operations do they do now??? It's a really diffrent navy.

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Did you miss the part about "historically...due to weapons limitation..." then followed by "under new OMTE PLAN aircraft and vessels now routinely transition from one period to the next" ... they were only RIGHT NEXT to the historical reference to night anchoring

I do a search for "night", and find dozens references to night training. You had to pick this one, then present it out of context.