China’s military needs to ‘upgrade weaponry, extend surveillance in western Pacific’
Official report calls for wider projection of power, listing the US, Japan, Taiwan, India and Vietnam as airspace 'threats' until 2030
China’s air force needs to broaden its air surveillance and attack capabilities in the western Pacific including the area near Japan to ensure its command of the skies, according to an official study.
The report, prepared by the Air Force Command Academy in November, also stressed the need to develop and enhance nine types of “strategic equipment” with an eye specifically towards the United States and its “pivot” to Asia.
The academy, a Beijing-based think tank for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, has not publicly released the report, which laid out visions for the air strategy to as far as 2030.
Listing the US, Japan, Taiwan, India and Vietnam as “threats” in military airspace until 2030, the report proposed broadening Beijing’s scope of surveillance from the so-called “first island chain” to the “second island chain”.
The “first island chain” – linking Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines – has been regarded as an area that Beijing sees as an important barrier of defence, in particular against US military presence.
The “second island chain” includes a larger area that stretches farther away to include Japan’s Izu Island chain, Guam and New Guinea.
Joint exercises between services and arms could be incrementally increased