Why Beijing does not need its newly built airport - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

In Southern Beijing, China is building the prestigious Beijing Daxing International Airport, due to open next September and serving up to 72 million passengers annually by 2025. But it is not only glamor being constructed, writes Beijing-based author Ian Johnson for the New York Times. If the military would not tightly control the Chinese airspace, the airport would not be needed to start with.

Ian Johnson:

With roughly 70 percent of airspace controlled by the military (versus 20 percent in the United States), commercial aircraft flying in China are limited to narrow tunnels in the sky. This restricts options for departure and arrival routing, cutting the number of takeoffs and landings that airports can handle. 

Beijing Capital, for example, was the world’s second-busiest airport based on passenger volume in 2017, but it ranked fifth based on takeoffs and landings, nearly a third fewer than the world leader, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. 

The lack of airspace is also a key reason delays are so common in China. Last year, flight delays increased 50 percent, with only 71 percent of flights taking off on time, according to government statistics. That’s helped push Chinese airlines to the bottom of punctuality rankings, with one study ranking three Chinese airlines as the worst among 20 large-scale carriers. 

Although aviation authorities blame the weather for half of the delays, Mr. Guo of Q&A Consulting said the underlying cause was the military-induced lack of airspace. 

When a corridor is blocked by a thunderstorm, for example, Chinese flight controllers often cannot reroute an airplane, because it would have to enter military airspace. That causes planes to sit on the ground or fly holding patterns when in other countries they could land or take off. 

“The congestion takes place in the sky because the military only allows for a certain number of tunnels,” Mr. Guo said. “If that doesn’t change, the ground infrastructure needs to be expanded.” 

The new airport will help by initially opening four, then up to eight, new runways in the suburb of Daxing, 41 miles southwest of Beijing Capital. The number of air corridors available for civilian use stays the same, but the new runways will provide airlines with more ways to gain access to this limited airspace, allowing the Beijing area to facilitate more flights.

More at the New York Times.

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Report: PLA's A-team spies on the internet - Wendell Minnick

Wendell Minnick

A new report from the US details the efforts of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to spy online, writes defense specialist Wendell Minnick in Defense News. The Chinese army might be addressing unauthorized cyber attacks, but the focus is still unclear.

Wendell Minnick:

The report, "The Chinese People's Liberation Army Signal Intelligence and Cyber Reconnaissance Infrastructure," by Mark Stokes and Jenny Lin of the Project 2049 Institute, Arlington, Va., provides the first overview of the PLA General Staff Department's Third Department, China's premier cryptologic service responsible for signals and cyber intelligence collection. 

The Third Department is comparable to the U.S. National Security Agency and appears to be diversifying its traditional SIGINT mission to include cyber surveillance, also known as computer network exploitation (CNE), the report said. 

The Third Department's Seventh Bureau (61580 Unit) is responsible for CNE. Headquartered in Beijing, the bureau's engineers specialize in computer network defense and attack, and have conducted joint studies with the PLA Information Engineering Academy Computer Network Attack and Defense Section. The bureau has been known to conduct research outlining U.S. network-centric warfare and dense wavelength-division multiplexing. 

CNE also is conducted by the Technical Reconnaissance Bureaus (TRB), Stokes said: "A senior engineer from the Hainan office was granted awards for network-related work, including possible surveillance of Voice over Internet Protocol."... 

China could be cracking down on its own cyber warfare activities. Lt. Gen. Wu Guohua, who directed the Third Department from 2005 to 2010, allegedly was transferred out due to unauthorized cyber attacks. 

"If true, it appears that senior civilian leaders could have some understanding of the political damage caused by overt, hostile network penetration," Stokes said. 

Another possible reason for the dismissal could be that the Third Department overstepped its area of responsibility. 

The Chengdu Military Region's 1st Technical Reconnaissance Bureau also may be involved in cyber surveillance. The degree of control that the Third Department exercises over the Technical Reconnaissance Bureau bureaucracies of the country's seven military regions is unknown, but Third Department's resources dedicated to high-performance computing and its large arsenal of skilled linguists could comprise China's cryptologic "A-Team."

More in Defense News

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Silver Hawk UAV made test flight - Wendell Minnick

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) conducted on June 1 its first test flight with the Silver Hawk UAV in the Binhai area, targeting commucation between navy vessels at sea, writes Wendell Minnick in Defense News.

The Defense News:

According to an unconfirmed Chinese-language report, during a 3.5 hour flight test the Silver Hawk carried out a series of communications relay tests.

"This new communications relay UAV is consistent with the PLA's overarching doctrine of informatization and its ambition to make increasing use of unmanned systems," said Richard Fisher, senior fellow, International Assessment and Strategy Center. While its capabilities are not fully known, the UAV will likely allow division or brigade commands to better ensure integrity of communications.

"This version has not been previously disclosed and has likely been developed to include more versions, such as electronics warfare and electronics intelligence," he said.

A photograph appearing on a Chinese nongovernmental website, chinamil.com, shows what appears to be a modified ASN-209 outfitted with four upright vertical antennas on the body and the wings. The ASN-209 has direct line-of-sight (LOS) data link as well as ground-based and airborne data relay for beyond LOS missions. Produced by the ASN Technology Group in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, the ASN-209 is a popular configuration used by other Chinese UAV programs.

More in Defense News.

Wendell Minnick

Wendell Minnick is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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PLA joins international military exchange - Wendell Minnick

Liang Guanglie via Wikipedia

China's PLA is about 20 years behind the US military, Defense minister general Liang Guanglie told the Shangri-la Dialogue last Monday, writes Wendell Minnick in Defense News. It was the first time ever a high-ranking delegation of the People's Liberation Army joined the annual conference.
One the gap between China and the US military General Liang said:

"I would call the gap big," he said. Liang acknowledged that China's military modernization has improved, but the "main battle equipment of our services ... is mainly second-generation weapons." China does not have a large arsenal of third-generation weapons, systems or platforms. "For example, the army is still being motorized, not mechanized," he said.

Wendell Minnick on the PLA's presence at the conference:

After years of ignoring the Shangri-La Dialogue, China sent an unprecedented senior-level delegation. The annual conference is sponsored by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), officially known as the IISS Asia Security Summit, and includes the attendance of defense ministers from across the globe, including U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Liang said military-to-military relations with the U.S. were improving. The U.S. just concluded meetings in May with senior Chinese defense officials in Washington for the Security and Economic Dialogue, and the Pentagon hosted a separate visit by Gen. Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff, People's Liberation Army (PLA).

More in Defense News.

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Air Force loses between powerful military - Wendell Minnick

Image via Wikipedia

China's military leaders at the People's Liberation Army (PLA) might belong to the most powerful, its Air Force might be rising, but is still lacking clout, learned Wendell Minnick at a conference last week in Taipei on the position of the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), he writes on his weblog.

Despite improvements in China’s ability to dominate the airspace in and around Taiwan and project air power into the South China Sea, the PLAAF faces challenges from Army-led leaders that often inhibit air power.



“The Army has always and will most likely continue to dominate the PLA’s joint leadership and structure,” said Kenneth Allen, a China military specialist at the Defense Group of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analyst, Washington.



All the uniformed vice chairmen of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), which has total authority over the military, have been Army officers, he said. This includes the head of each of the four General Departments and the commander of each military region. 
“In my opinion, there are no indications this situation will change,” Allen said.



More at Wendell Minnick's weblog

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Huawei under US scrutiny - Wendell Minnick

Wendell Minnick via Flickr

Eight Republican senators have taken on China's electronic firm Huawei, the alter ego of the US giant Cisco. The eight accuse Huawei in a letter of US departments of having ties with Iran, the Taliban and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), writes Wendell Minnick in Defense News:

China’s largest networking and telecommunications equipment provider, Huawei is looking to bid for subcontracts offered by Sprint Nextel, a supplier to the Pentagon and U.S. law enforcement agencies. The Chinese firm’s effort is being spearheaded by Amerilink Telecom, a Kansas-based company whose chairman is retired U.S. Navy Adm. William Owens. The former vice chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned in his 2000 book about a rising military threat from Beijing, but more recently has developed business ties with Chinese firms.



If Huawei wins, it could “present a case of a company, acting at the direction of and funded by the Chinese military, taking a critical place in the supply chain of the U.S. military, law enforcement, and private sector,” the letter says. “We are concerned that Huawei’s position as a supplier of Sprint Nextel could create substantial risk for U.S. companies and possibly undermine U.S. national security.”

The letter is yet another step in the increased military tension between China and the US, documented by Wendell Minnick for Defense News.
More in his weblog.

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