Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

China is developing a force to tackle information warfare

Net Force is part of Unrestricted Warfare.

China’s Master Plan to Destroy America
Unrestricted Warfare
Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui
(Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999)

Excerpt: Unrestricted Warfare

Whether it be the intrusions of hackers, a major explosion at the World Trade Center, or a bombing attack by bin Laden, all of these greatly exceed the frequency band widths understood by the American military.
http://ftp.die.net/mirror/cryptome/cuw02.htm

China’s military modernisation programme is being fuelled by the US military presence in Asia and multinational efforts to develop missile defence systems, as well as continued US arms sales to Taiwan.

China’s concerns in this regard are likely to grow in the light of the Bush administration’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and go ahead with plans to build a missile defence system.

According to a Chinese white paper, Beijing sees “new negative developments” in the Asia-Pacific region. These include a strengthening US military presence and bilateral military alliances in China’s neighbourhood, and US development of a theatre missile defence system and plans to deploy it in Asia. “The Taiwan Straits situation is complicated and grim,” the white paper states.

Missile Defense: #msg-4357866

China’s preparation for war is in response to Bush’s overly aggressive tactics.

-Am

POETIC LICENCE: China is developing a force to tackle information warfare

Kaleem Omar

Not everyone in the US defence community believes that China’s military is a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away from disrupting or corrupting an enemy’s information backbone

China is developing a strategic information warfare unit to neutralise the military capabilities of technologically more advanced foes, according to a new US report. The unit, dubbed Net Force, will wage combat through computer networks to manipulate enemy information systems spanning spare parts deliveries to fire control and guidance systems, according to a report prepared by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research arm of the Library of Congress.

“China is pursuing the concept of a Net Force which would consist of a strong reserve force of computer experts trained at a number of universities, academies and training centres,” according to the CRS report, titled “Cyberwarfare”. “Several large annual training exercises have taken place since 1997. The Chinese have placed significant emphasis on training younger persons for these tasks,” the report said.

A military official at China’s embassy in Washington said no such entity exists but agreed that China has put a priority on such efforts, according to a report published in the American weekly military journal Defence News. “Officially, we do not have such a Net Force,” the official was quoted as saying. “We have not heard of that. But we pay a lot of attention to information warfare, like the military people in the US.”

The Defence News report quoted James Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist with the Rand Corporation think tank in Washington, as saying that there is “a very, very robust effort going on in China to have a wholesale move from some of the more primitive systems they used to use to land-line fibre optics, digital microwave and satellite communications.”

If these technologies are matched with skilled operators to create an effective computer-network attack capability, China could have a potent so-called asymmetric, or non-traditional, weapon to level the battlefield in a conventional fight against a more technologically sophisticated foe, such as the United States, Mulvenon said.

US government assessments of China’s information warfare capability are classified. However, many analysts have considered what a strategic information warfare capability could give China, the Defence News report noted.

“It would give China a power-projection capability that its conventional forces just don’t have,” Mulvenon said. “It would allow China to reach out and touch US forces in the continental United States that their conventional forces physically can’t.”

Strategic information warfare, Mulvenon argued, could give China the means to shape US attempts to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan. “Because if you can trip up our logistics tail in the rear areas, you might be able to slow the flow of forces,” he said.

According to the Defence News report, however, not everyone in the US defence community believes that China’s military is a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away from disrupting or corrupting an enemy’s information backbone.

“These futuristic capabilities are very much that — futuristic,” Bates Gill, a defence analyst with the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, was quoted as saying.

China’s military, like nearly every major power, paid close attention to the Gulf War and the role that information technology played in defeating Iraqi forces and their largely Russian and Chinese equipment.

The Chinese government made oblique references to information warfare objectives in its defence white paper issued in October 2000.

“Faced with the world’s military developments and the characteristic of modern warfare,” states the document, “the Chinese armed forces will, in the course of modernising their weaponry, devote themselves to transforming semi-mechanised and mechanised weapon systems to automated and information systems as soon as possible, so that they can possess weapons as advanced as possible.”

According to Gill, however, “They (the Chinese) still have a very long way to go... with little in the way of joint cross-service, air-land battle kind of capabilities that the United States has perfected for so long.” It is just this sort of dominance that an offensive information warfare capability could be designed to offset.

If progress in introducing expensive information technologies across China’s vast conventional forces is slow, China has crafted a vigorous programme to modernise other strategic information systems, according to Mark Stokes, a former US assistant defence attaché in Beijing who now works on the Pentagon’s China desk.

In a paper published in 2000 by the US Army War College, Stokes argued that Beijing could gain information dominance against a technologically advanced enemy if China succeeds in efforts to modernise its telecommunications infrastructure, develops a robust space-, air- and ground-based sensor network, and creates electronic attack systems.

The defence position white paper issued by the Chinese government in October 2000 says that China’s military modernisation programme is being fuelled by the US military presence in Asia and multinational efforts to develop missile defence systems, as well as continued US arms sales to Taiwan.

China’s concerns in this regard are likely to grow in the light of the Bush administration’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and go ahead with plans to build a missile defence system.

Beijing’s white paper warns of “drastic action” in the event of any move by Taiwan towards independence. China regards Taiwan as its rightful territory and staunchly opposes US arms sales to the island. According to the new defence document, Beijing is designing its military modernisation programme in large part to counter what it calls US hegemony.

According to a Chinese white paper, Beijing sees “new negative developments” in the Asia-Pacific region. These include a strengthening US military presence and bilateral military alliances in China’s neighbourhood, and US development of a theatre missile defence system and plans to deploy it in Asia. “The Taiwan Straits situation is complicated and grim,” the white paper states.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_18-10-2002_pg3_8