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  • China’s Ground Segment: Building the Pillars of a Great Space Power

    Space has long been important to national security.  Dating back decades, the “Space Race” was not just about the ideological competition between the communist Soviets and the free West, it had real world national security implications.  That is even more true today.  As technology has advanced and

  • Initial Fighter Pilot Training in the PLA Air Force

    At the beginning of the 2010s, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force’s (PLAAF’s) program for the initial training of fighter pilots had three problems. First, the program was inordinately long and gradual. Second, the PLAAF lacked an advanced trainer aircraft that was suitable for

  • ITOW: China Coast Guard Law

    Click here for PDF: Coast Guard Law of the People's Republic of China(Announced at the 25th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress on January 22, 2021)Table of ContentsChapter One General PrinciplesChapter Two Institutions and ResponsibilitiesChapter Three Marine

  • Commanders of the PLA Air Force

    In the era of great power competition, it is important to understand all of the actors. Not just organizations and structure, but people as well. On 27 August 2017, Lieutenant General Ding Laihang became the 12th Commander of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force (PLAAF) since 1949. He

  • PLA's Science of Military Strategy (2013)

          The “In Their Own Words” series is dedicated to translations of Chinese documents in order to help non-Mandarin speaking audiences access and understand Chinese thinking. CASI would like to thank all of those involved in this effort, especially the teams from our "big brother"/ 大哥 at the China

  • Achieving the PLA's Strategic Support Force talent needs through MCF

    Successful Military-Civil Fusion integration (MCF) is key to realizing China's military space and cyber ambitions. President Xi Jinping has emphasized the importance of this objective, and the recently established People Liberation Army's Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) is a case in point. The

  • Jiang Luming- Architect of China's Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    This short report provides biographical information about Major General Dr. Jiang Luming [姜鲁鸣], an influential thinker and strategist, pioneer in the field of defense economics in China and the preeminent scholar behind China’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy.Click here for the full PDF

  • CASI PLA Fundamentals Course

    PLA Fundamentals CourseCASI hosts a professional development course that we call PLA Fundamentals.  This course is free and open to U.S. military, allies, partners, DoD, and USG civilians.  We host the course every several months throughout the year.  Most iterations take place at National Defense

  • Chinese Airborne C4ISR

         As we move further into the era of 21st century great power competition, it is important to understand the many facets of that competition. This report is the next in a series of studies by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) that seeks to lay the foundation for better understanding

  • The Improvement of the PLA’s Close Air Support Capability

    In August 2020 the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) indicated that some of its units had made technological and procedural advancements in its capability to provide close air support (CAS). The PLA has been working to develop the systems and procedures to conduct CAS safely and effectively for

  • In their Own Words: PLA's Science of Campaigns

         The “In Their Own Words” series is dedicated to translations of Chinese documents in order to help non-Mandarin speaking audiences access and understand Chinese thinking. CASI would like to thank all of those involved in this effort, especially the teams from our "big brother"/ 大哥 at the China

  • Air-to-Air Missiles: Capabilities and Developments In China

    “Good enough”, this is how I often describe China’s short-term ambitions. They don’t need to have a world-class / global-leader military, not yet; what they need is something that is ‘good enough’. This has implications for how China pursues its program of military modernization and its goal to

  • In their Own Words: China’s Military Strategy White Papers

      2015 China's Military Strategy  The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China This copy has both the Mandarin and the English together, broken by paragraphs. 2015 White Paper-Eng and Ch.pdf    2010 China Defense White Paper The State

  • In Their Own Words

    CASI has started a new project we are calling "In Their Own Words".  The CCP and the PLA think of Mandarin characters as their first cipher, their first line of defense, in keeping their thoughts and ideas concealed from the west.  CASI is helping English speaking audiences in accessing these

  • First PLA Rocket Force CJ-100 Unit Likely Identified

    There is a limited body of evidence that strongly suggests the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) is equipping its 656th Brigade with the CJ-100 cruise missile (alternatively known as the DF-100). This assessment is based on an image of a probable CJ-100 transporter-erector-launcher (TEL)

  • Command of the Air - the view of the PLAAF

         Although the 2004 white paper is the first of the PRC’s defense white papers to note what it calls “command of the air,” identified in the Chinese version as  zhikongquan (制空权), the concept for the PLAAF dates back to the 1960s.  Although the 2015 Defense White Paper, which focused on PLA

  • China’s Navy Begins Fielding Newly Manufactured J-15 Carrier-Capable Fighters

    The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has likely received a new batch of J-15 carrier-based fighters. Recent video footage released on “Military Express” (军事快播) shows a J-15 with a tail number of “31” and another with either “33” or “35”. All previously known J-15 tail numbers fell within the

  • China's Space Narrative

         Both China and the United States have created separate parts of their military dedicated to space. Commercial, scientific, and military endeavors in space are all intimately linked, and one must understand how they are viewed to better understand how a nation might proceed in one or all of