increasingly limited access to advanced technologies from the West may impede the PLA’s progress toward fully achieving an “intelligentized” military. However, the PRC is pursuing domestic production of critical technologies to reduce reliance on foreign sources.
Electronic Warfare. The PLA considers EW to be an integral component of modern warfare and seeks to achieve information dominance in a conflict through the coordinated use of cyberspace and electronic warfare to protect its own information networks and deny the enemy the use of the electromagnetic spectrum. The PRC’s EW strategy emphasizes suppressing, degrading, disrupting, or deceiving enemy electronic equipment throughout the continuum of a conflict. The PLA will likely use electronic warfare prior to a conflict as a signaling mechanism to warn and deter adversary offensive action. Potential EW targets include adversary systems operating in radio, radar, microwave, infrared and optical frequency ranges, as well as adversary computer and information systems. PLA EW units routinely train to conduct jamming and anti-jamming operations against multiple communication and radar systems and Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite systems during force-on-force exercises. These exercises test operational units’ understanding of EW weapons, equipment, and procedures and they also enable operators to improve confidence in their ability to operate effectively in a complex electromagnetic environment. In addition, the PLA reportedly tests and validates advances in EW weapons’ R&D during these exercises.
Cyberspace Warfare. The development of cyberspace warfare capabilities is consistent with PLA writings, which identify IO—comprising cyberspace, electronic, space, and psychological warfare—as integral to achieving information superiority early in a conflict as an effective means to counter a stronger foe. The PRC has publicly identified cyberspace as a critical domain for national security and declared its intent to expedite the development of its cyber forces.
The PRC poses a sophisticated, persistent cyber-enabled espionage and attack threat to military and critical infrastructure systems and presents a growing influence threat. The PRC seeks to create disruptive and destructive effects—from denial-of-service attacks to physical disruptions of critical infrastructure—to shape decision making and disrupt military operations beginning in the initial stages and throughout a conflict. The PRC can launch cyberspace attacks that, at a minimum, can cause localized, temporary disruptions to critical infrastructure within the United States, and the PRC believes these capabilities are even more effective against militarily superior adversaries that depend on information technologies. As a result, the PRC is advancing its cyberspace attack capabilities and has the ability to launch cyberspace attacks—such as disruption of a natural gas pipeline for days to weeks—in the United States.
Authoritative PLA sources call for the coordinated employment of space, cyberspace, and EW as strategic weapons to “paralyze the enemy’s operational system of systems” and “sabotage the enemy’s war command system of systems” early in a conflict. PLA writings judge other countries have effectively used cyberspace warfare and other IO in recent conflicts and argue for attacks against C2 and logistics networks to affect an adversary’s ability to make decisions and take actions in the early stages of conflict. The PLA also considers cyberspace capabilities to be a
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OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China
