Distant Sea Training

Strategic Vision vol. 11, no. 53 (September, 2022) Distant Sea Training

PLAAF harassment made possibly by shifts in training, operational concepts

Ying Yu Lin

A Y-8 transport aircraft of the PLA Air Force takes off from a military airfield on February 23, 2018.

photo: Yin Wenbo & Li Cunyong

Chinese military aircraft made 446 incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in August 2022, according to media reports. This number is far higher than the number of incursions that took place during the whole of 2020. The political goal appears to be to normalize Chinese presence so close to the median line, and to inch closer to Taiwan itself in small enough steps that each falls short of a cause for war. In short, the same sort of salami-slice strategy that earned Beijing control over the South China Sea while the world looked on. To make it feasible for use in the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese military had to develop new capabilities and operational concepts. This article will examine the development of those concepts over the past few years and the challenge they pose to defense planners in Taiwan.

In early 2015, the term “Distant Sea Training” saw an uptick in use in military and strategic circles in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It refers to what was then a new type of flight training for People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pilots, involving sorties flown especially by Xian H-6K strategic bombers to areas in the Western Pacific beyond the first island chain. Such training, not being geographically confined to certain areas, was orientated toward helping the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) hone its tactical maneuvers specific to a new battle space.

The most recent round of military reform initiated in 2016 saw the emergence of a new guiding principle wherein theater commands are responsible for operations and service. Following this, the five newly established theater commands gained direct control of attached units, irrespective of the services to which they belong. This era saw the rise of the PLA Rocket Force (formerly the Second Artillery Corps) and the concept of Distant Sea Training as a military operation. The latter also had political value, for strategic messaging directed at certain countries in the region, and was a task that no single service could handle alone. It is now supplemented with realistic training objectives and supported by a tight air defense network formed by anti-aircraft missiles, fighting ships, and the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. The execution of integrated joint operations is likely handled by theater command joint operations centers that came into existence as part of the most recent military reform. Coordination between air force and naval aviation units under theater commands is a requirement. In particular, it is aimed at realizing PRC President Xi Jinping’s direction on training in a realistic way: essentially, to train in the way that they will be expected to fight.

A simulated ground target is bombed by an H-6K bomber during the exercise Golden Dart in northeastern China on April 18, 2018.

photo: Yang Pan

Distant Sea Training is a type of realistic training that got underway in 2015. The guiding concept testifies to the fact that the PLAAF plays an offensive role in the “active defense” strategy formulated by the PLA, the goals of which are to gain air superiority, damage critical targets, destroy transportation and logistics supply systems, and neutralize the threat of hostile ground forces to enable the PLA to engage the enemy on the ground and at sea without having to worry about threats from the air.

In the aforementioned overwater flights to the Western Pacific, being the first of their kind for the PLAAF, there were a number of unknowns. The learning curve involved not only technical and operational issues, such as intelligence gathering, battlefield management, and verification of coordinates of vital strategic targets as shown on BeiDou devices, but also political issues, such as the response of the countries that were affected.

The experience and information collected over several years led the PLA in 2018 to publish a new outline for military training that focused on the PLA’s combat capability, highlighting military training under combat conditions and joint training. Units at all levels of the various services and branches are directed to complete their annual specialized and joint operations training on schedule, unless they are otherwise occupied with special tasks. The navy and air force in particular were to enhance their combat skills through repeated practice in war games. This new direction showed that the PLA had made strides in reformulating military training content, making it realistic, scientific, and standardized, and conducive to joint operations.

A shift in focus

The new strategy for the PLAAF was to shift focus from territorial air defense to cover both defense and offense, as well as to build an air-space defense force structure to effect informatized operations. This transformed the PLAAF from a tactical air force to a strategic one. It also means that the PLAAF will not confine itself to activities within the atmosphere, making use of those space-based information platforms that are supportive of air combat operations. Moreover, the air force has been fully informatized, and is capable of conducting integrated operations with other service branches.

The main significance of the shift to a dual offensive and defensive role is that the air force has moved on from its past function of homeland air defense, wherein its main task was to intercept intruding aircraft. It now has a strategic role characterized by the capability to strike targets overseas, both hostile ships and land targets in other countries. In addition to the training mentioned above, the PLAAF’s transformation also included hardware upgrades. The acquisition of advanced fighter jets from Russia, the production of fighter planes based on reverseengineered Russian technology, and the entry into service of early-warning and electronic-warfare aircraft, have all contributed to the PLAAF’s capability to measure the effectiveness of a system by pitting it against another. All these developments are enablers of control of the air, realized through the Distant Sea Training concept.

Training started with a single type of aircraft, a fixed route, and a single theater command before evolving to include multiple aircraft types, multiple services, and flight routes across theater commands. The flights, and the routes they took, represented a grave threat to Taiwan. In one case in 2018, the PLA flew a Shaanxi Y-8, which is a Chinese copy of the Soviet Antonov An-12, along the disputed flight route M503 to conduct electronic surveillance of Taiwan’s armed forces, taking advantage of the fact that the civilian flight route skirts just 7.8 kilometers from the median line of the Taiwan Strait. In 2020, during visits to Taiwan by high-ranking US officials, the PLA demonstrated Xi’s displeasure by making multiple sorties of fighter jets and bombers based in the Eastern and Southern Theater Commands to cross the median line and enter Taiwan’s ADIZ, at a distance of only 37 nautical miles to Taiwan proper in their closest approach to the island.

Su-30 fighter jets receive pre-flight checks in preparation for the PLA Air Force annual penetration and assault competition assessment on April 15, 2018.

photo: Yang Pan

On-going reform

Similar military and quasi-military action, coupled with political and military issues in recent years, has led to the emergence of varying training models that are highly unpredictable. Despite the fact that 2016 saw military reform enforced across the services, military exercises of all sorts did not increase appreciably that year. For the PLA, military reform was an on-going process in 2016, which made it impractical to launch large-scale exercises because the military structure, command mechanisms, and even training outline as mandated by the reform program were still in flux, and had yet to take shape. On top of that, the BeiDou-3 global navigation satellite system became operational in December 2018, which helps explain the surge in PLAAF drills in 2017 and 2018: the PLAAF linked to the new BeiDou system for tests in three areas: navigation, positioning, and time service. Distant Sea Training thus dramatically increased in that two-year period.

The considerable improvements in PLAAF’s overall performance is concrete proof of the usefulness of the Distant Sea Training concept. The PLAAF used to focus its attention on homeland air defense. While the idea of combining air and space components, and assuming an offensive and defensive stance, were ideas that were raised as early as 2004, little was done at that time. In the Distant Sea Training that kicked off in 2015, the PLAAF did not count on single-plane maneuvers, but on scenarios that envisaged longdistance strikes initiated by theater commands, and strikes that could break through enemy defense lines. Thus, over the past few years, the PLAAF has focused its attention on air strike formations, with capabilities ranging from providing cover from enemy aircraft and launching electronic warfare attacks, to suppressing the enemy with air strikes and attacking carrier strike groups.

Other areas of attention include command and control systems for multi-ship formations, coordinated guidance for multiple aircraft in air combat, coordinated targeting for multiple aircraft, and allocation of firepower resources. This training focus represents a quantum leap in operability over the PLAAF’s previous task of homeland air defense, when it was incapable of launching strikes on targets beyond the border. The service is now in the process of acquiring the capability to combine air and space components and be alternatively offensive and defensive. To reach this goal, it must develop joint operations capabilities that put all corners of China within its reach, as well as coordinating offensive and defensive operations with logistics support. The PLAAF’s Distant Sea Training is a step in that direction.

In a military parade on October 1, 2019, the PLAAF demonstrated its capabilities by way of mission-specific plane formations, including an early warning and command aircraft formation, an airlifter formation, a long-range strike aircraft formation, and an air raid formation. This was to demonstrate that the PLAAF had developed a sequence of steps to initiate quick precision strikes against targets in the air, on the ground, and at sea. In doing so, it hopes to become a strategic air force in a real sense.

For the PRC, a strategic air force symbolizes air superiority for the country that fields it. It is a service with long-range fire-projection capabilities that can fight on its own. With the support of combined air and space components, it can fight independently of other services or play a leading role in joint operations, to impose strategic intimidation upon the enemy and launch precision strikes against enemy targets, helping Beijing to reach its strategic objectives. Distant Sea Training also carries connotations that are associated with international politics, the regional economy, cross-strait relations, and safeguarding China’s territorial integrity.

Of course, Beijing claims that the training flights discussed herein are not intended for any specific countries or targets, and that they comply with international law and customs. In reality, the constant incursion into Taiwan’s ADIZ is obviously meant to harass and intimidate political leaders, as well as to wear down the operability of Taiwan’s air assets through the constant scrambling of jets to monitor the incursions. The danger of having two opposing fighting forces in such proximity under such stressful conditions cannot be overstated, and the risk of accidental conflagration into war is ever-present with every successive incursion.

An H-6K bomber conducts high-altitude horizontal bombing against simulated targets during assault operations against ground air defense troops.

photo: Yang Pan

Dr. Ying Yu Lin is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University in Taiwan. He also is a research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight.