The huge military parade passing through central Beijing on Wednesday was a deliberately horrifying display of weapons designed to send a message that Xi Jinping’s vision of a new world order with China, often backed up with high-tech arms that appear to go beyond its Rival.
Many post-parade attention will be focused on new long-range nuclear weapons like the DF-61 InterContinental Ballistic Missile, but more important in the long run are weapons like new mobile trucks and vessels mounted laser air defense weapons.
As China showed at a pre-parade press conference, if these are already deployed in numbers to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), they can present real issues with the enemy’s ability to blunt China’s military movements around the region.
But there is a warning and it is not time to call the PLA the world’s outstanding military.
Here’s what I learned from today’s parade:
Pra deployed an astonishing amount of hardware on Beijing’s most famous boulevard, the path of eternal peace.
However, since the DF-61 (ICBM) was introduced at the 2019 military parade, it certainly stood out like the DF-61, which includes the giant intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), carried in an eight-axis truck, which will be the first new ICBM for the PLA Rocket Force.
Missiles equipped with hypersensitivity glide vehicle (HGV) were also highlighted.
HGVs are capable of carrying warheads at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, with irregular flight trajectories that can plague missile defenses.
From special unmanned unmanned submarines to aircraft that can fly as “loyal wingmen,” to state-of-the-art stealth fighters of the PLA Air Force, there were impressive drones on display.
Some were ground drones armed with machine guns, suitable for clearing mines and logistics, but they were in formation.
And then there was the laser.
There were two versions of the PLA. One was designed for naval air defense. The other appeared small and mounted on trucks to protect the troops on the ground.
Lasers are one of the classes known as “instructed energy weapons” and can also include powerful microwave systems. Rather than using projectiles to kill motion, these weapons rely on electromagnetic energy to disable targets through heat, destruction of internal electrical systems, or blinding sensors such as optics and radar.
The designated energy weapons are more economical than the weapons of the movement, with shots from the lasers sacrificing just a small portion of the bullets and missiles. Heavy metal projectiles do not need to move with weapons, and therefore logistics are easy as they do not need to be moved by just energy sources.
The vast amount of military hardware on display shows China has the industrial power to support its words.
It is a kind of industrial capacity the United States has put together to win World War II, and its end is said to mark Wednesday’s parade.
However, while US industry spelled the end of its axis 80 years ago, the US now has no capacity to generate the number of weapons that China can make.
“What the Chinese are demonstrating here is their ability to develop their own military capabilities and deploy and do it faster than what’s happening in the West,” said Malcolm Davis, senior analyst for defense strategies at the Australian Institute of Strategic Policy (ASPI). “We’ll also do that in terms of the number of weapons deployed.”
The analysis published by the Center for Strategies and International Studies on the Eve of the Parade showed part of the mathematical shift, courtesy of Beijing.
China’s defense spending has increased 13 times over the past 30 years, according to a CSIS report produced by fellow CSIS China Power Projects, Matthew Funaiole and Brian Hart.
Beijing still spends about a third of what the US is doing to defend, but the report says it’s cutting in half over the past 12 years is rapidly filling the gap.
However, regionally, defense spending is not even close.
“China is heading to its neighbors, spending five times more money on Japan’s defense, and nearly seven times more money than South Korea. This is two important US allies in the region.”
The most severe difference with the US comes to the sea.
China is expected to have 48% more combat ships than the US by 2030, the report said.
A 2023 paper by a professor at the US Navy War College looked at the history of naval wars and found that a larger fleet almost always wins.
Some say the US can maintain its edge through technology like AI-powered drones. But Wednesday’s military parade showed that it might be a false hope.
The PLA layers were packed with drones for combat on the ground, in the air and in the sea.
“The unmanned systems that the Chinese are exhibiting today have made a huge advance. They seem to be more advanced in some respects than what we see in the West, and they provide operational services,” said Davis of ASPI.
And they are only for offensive combat roles.
For example, the aforementioned laser-mediated drone defense could also be leaning towards Beijing’s favor.
“We basically see before us what the Chinese describe as intelligent war,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Fund for International Peace. “We see a lot of autonomy capabilities, network functions, and modern 21st century combat systems.”
The formations parading through Beijing on Wednesday provided incredible visuals, but to put them together into coordinated combat power, it is necessary to be invisible.
“China is famous for not fighting in proper high-intensity conflicts since the Korean War, and since the war between China and Vietnam (1979), so what does it tell you about their ability to win? As you’ve learned from Russia’s experience in Ukraine, you can’t count the beans,” Panda said.
On the other hand, as a comparison, it is difficult to discuss the US military’s ability to target firepower.
It is hard to imagine in China’s current capabilities, as the US was a strike at Iran’s nuclear site in June, dropping 14 of the world’s most powerful traditional weapons to target while seven B-2 stealth bombers didn’t portray countermeasures.
For one thing, the PLA Air Force has yet to show stealth bombers in the B-2 category, but is said to be in work. Still, the next generation of US bombers, the B-21, is already in the prototype stage.
So even after an impressive show in Beijing on Wednesday, the analyst community is still wary.
Retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan said he believes the United States remains the most powerful military in the world.
“The Chinese military is very technically refined, but most importantly, it’s about building everything it needs for indigenous peoples,” he told CNN, adding that it means Beijing cannot be “forced” by foreign arms suppliers.
However, he pointed out that none of the weapons on display have been tested in combat.
“The superficially impressive parade is not a good indicator of military effectiveness,” Ryan said.
