PLA's armaments showcased in grand military parade

World
Europe

By CGTN's Gong Zhe

Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has on Sunday paraded in front of their highest commander, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The parade, set to celebrate PLA’s 90th founding anniversary, took place in a remote grassland instead of a city area like the Tiananmen Square, to stress on its battleground-like fashion.

More than 12,000 soldiers and commanders were involved in the parade, which showcased China’s new weapons and the result of recent military reforms.

The PLA celebrates its 90th founding anniversary in a parade on Sunday, July 30. /CGTN Photo

The PLA celebrates its 90th founding anniversary in a parade on Sunday, July 30. /Xinhua Photo

Maiden parade

According to the latest information provided by the parade’s headquarters, 40 percent of the equipment was shown for the first time in public.

Among the new equipment were China’s homemade fourth-generation fighter jet, the J-20, and multiple types of nuclear-capable missiles.

Details about the equipment were “not appropriate to be disclosed to outsiders,” a PLA official told CGTN Digital.

Three J-20 jets flying during the parade /CCTV Video

An overhead shot of a pilot inside a J-20 jet /CCTV Photo

Another important characteristic about the latest equipment was digitalization. Many of the weapons had integrated China’s own Beidou satellite navigation, and microcomputers, in the hope to secure fast data transfer between units.

Mix them up

The parade was another clear display of China’s military reform, as the parading army was divided by battle groups, instead of army types like ground, navy and air force.

Battle group is considered by PLA an effective way to fight modern warfare.

There were nine groups formed in the parade, including ground battle, information warfare, special task, anti-air, water battle, air battle, logistics, anti-terrorism and strategic striking groups.

A flag guard formation consisting of officers and soldiers from the army, air force, navy and rocket force of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) attends a military parade to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the PLA . /Xinhua Photo

CGTN Photo

To achieve this grouping, the forces had to get reorganized, allowing different army types to cooperate with each other. But how can an air force commander give command to a navy soldier?

“We have recently developed a new commanding system to suit this new need,” said Huang Xinyang, an adviser in the PLA Air Force. “The data links are now unified in the whole army. Further more, authorization has become more dynamic.”

Showcased as is

The timing of the parade forced the army to demonstrate their strength in a battle-ready fashion, as the event came in between the forces’ routine training, leaving no time for the them to get refreshed.

Tanks are reviewed in the military parade. /Xinhua Photo

Trucks loaded with missiles /CGTN Photo

“It’s just like real battle. Every soldier and every equipment are set to go to war,” Xie Xincheng, a PLA commander involved in air force coordination, told reporters. “Soldiers are holding their weapons, wielding their armors, while tanks are equipped with secondary oil tanks.

“Even the newly-formed supporting forces, like logistics group, have joined the parade,” he said.

In a normal PLA parade, some missiles were pointed up to the sky to make them seem powerful. But this time, they were laid down like in a real war.

Echelons of helicopters fly in formations during the military parade. /Xinhua Photo

For the air force, the “warfare-like” show was particularly hard to achieve, because they had to setup a mobile command center, which was quite new to them.

The mobile command center consists of multiple vehicles, which contain different function modules like weather monitoring, flight control, video streaming and more.