The Hatch Report (Highlights from China's Zhuhai Airshow)

This week's Hatch Report explores the latest developments from the country's premier aerospace and defense trade show.

Nov 26, 2024

Important Caveats

Source Reliability: The information presented below is derived from unverified social media accounts on X and a Sino-defense blog. It should not be considered definitive.
Operational Status: Many showcased systems are mockups, early-stage prototypes, or limited-production models. Their real-world effectiveness and fielding status are not discernable from trade shows.
Purpose: Despite these limitations, the Zhuhai Airshow provides valuable insights into the PRC's evolving vision of future warfare, advancements in its defense industry, and key systems that may soon enter service.

Key Takeaways

The platforms showcased at the Zhuhai Airshow underscored two enduring priorities for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA): human-machine teaming and expeditionary warfare capabilities. The latter can be further segmented into:

Mobile air defense systems designed to protect and keep pace with maneuver units.
Mobile ground platforms and weapons to increase the lethality of light formations.
Logistics solutions like heavy-UAS cargo aircraft to sustain distributed operations.

Broader Implications and Observations

The Zhuhai exhibition highlighted striking parallels between the U.S. and PLA’s visions for future warfare, prompting a critical question: How do we define military superiority in an era of increasing technological parity?

As the PLA continues its modernization efforts, mirroring many aspects of U.S. defense priorities—such as the Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC), Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), Joint Fires Network (JFN), Replicator, and the Service-led acquisition programs—it becomes evident that U.S. success in these initiatives must be viewed as a baseline for maintaining parity, not a path to dominance. Achieving true dominance will require significant advantages across several critical dimensions, including:

Innovative warfighting concepts and enabling technologies (like those mentioned above).
A highly trained, adaptable, and operationally proficient force.
A resilient and robust national manufacturing base capable of sustaining a protracted conflict.

While the prioritization of these dimensions may vary, the overarching trends are concerning:

China’s Growing Strength: The PRC possesses the financial resources, expertise, and ambition to steadily close critical technological gaps with the U.S. and expand its lead in others.
U.S. Manufacturing Shortfalls: Despite ongoing efforts, the U.S. continues to lag significantly behind China in national manufacturing capacity, a gap unlikely to be closed in the near term.
Human Capital Challenges: The U.S. military remains the world’s most highly trained and operationally proficient force, but this advantage is increasingly at risk. There’s a limited bench, and prolonged, large-scale combat operations could quickly result in the attrition of key personnel with years of specialized training and expertise. Replacing these losses would likely require deploying less-trained reinforcements, undermining the force’s ability to execute complex joint operations effectively.

The Need for Force Regeneration and Resilient Force Design

While much of the national security community has focused on addressing manufacturing capacity and reducing acquisition bottlenecks, there is an urgent need to address force regeneration challenges, particularly from this human capital perspective.

Replacing battlefield losses of ships, vehicles, and other material is vital, but these assets are of limited value without adequately trained personnel to operate them effectively in complex joint operations.

Consequently, the high attrition rates and force regeneration challenges—both material and human—should more strongly influence requirements, operational concepts, R&D priorities, and contingency planning. Examples include:

Developing platforms that are inherently user-friendly, require minimal training, and are easy to maintain.
Accelerating the adoption of autonomous systems and advanced AI to streamline mission planning and reduce personnel requirements.

These are just a few nascent ideas intended to spark discussion, but they underscore the need for a more focused public discourse on how attrition impacts operational concepts and modernization programs.

Deeper Dive into Zhuhai Observations

Human-Machine Teaming

This is a top priority for both the PLA and the U.S. military. In the U.S., notable examples include the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Capability (CCA) program and the Army's Human-Machine Integrated Formations initiative. Meanwhile, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and People's Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) are rapidly advancing comparable systems and concepts, many of which were prominently showcased at the Zhuhai Air Show.

In the air domain, much attention has been drawn to China's newly unveiled J-35, a rough analog to the U.S. F-35. However, the two-seat variant of the J-20, China's existing heavy 5th-generation fighter, is arguably more intriguing. While prototypes of the two-seat J-20 have been known for some time, renderings from the airshow clearly emphasized its potential integration with a range of unmanned platforms.

A two-person crew configuration, with a notional drone systems officer in the rear seat, could significantly expand the J-20's operational capabilities. This arrangement mitigates cognitive overload, allowing the pilot to focus on flying while the drone systems officer manages command and control (C2) for uncrewed platforms. Additionally, the J-20's low-observable design enhances its survivability in contested environments, reinforcing its potential as a forward-deployed C2 node. However, this variant, referred to as the J-20S, has yet to enter operational service.

In contrast, the U.S. has no known direct analog to the J-20S under development. Instead, the focus is on leveraging advanced software, AI, and UX design to mitigate cognitive overload for pilots of single-seat 5th-generation tactical fighter aircraft like the F-35. The U.S. also looks to future platforms like the extremely low-observable B-21 Raider to augment forward-deployed C2 in contested environments. While modern two-seat 4th-generation aircraft such as the F-15EX and Block III F/A-18 could accommodate drone systems officers, their non-low-observable designs limit their effectiveness in contested environments without additional support.

Importantly, there's a growing debate within the U.S. about the necessity of future crewed fighter platforms altogether, given the anticipated advancements in unmanned CCA aircraft over the next decade and increasing budgetary constraints. The hope is that enabling AI and C2 for CCA will reach a point where very limited human interaction is needed to carry out missions, and any human-driven C2 can be performed from distances outside the enemy's Weapons Engagement Zone (WEZ).

That said, if the U.S. Air Force and Navy do indeed decide to pursue a crewed 6th-generation tactical fighter, a two-seat variant would have its merits.

For more on the J-20S, be sure to check out this great write-up from the Warzone.

In the ground domain, both the PLAGF and the U.S. Army are actively developing UGVs to support a variety of missions, including overwatch, suppression, logistics, mine clearance, terrain shaping, and enhancing protection and magazine depth for co-located crewed platforms.

Mobile Short-Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD)

The PLA is clearly prioritizing M-SHORAD, as evidenced by the diverse array of such systems showcased at Zhuhai. These systems featured a range of defeat mechanisms, including high-power microwave (HPM), electronic warfare (EW), directed energy (DE), self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (SPAAGs), and missile systems.

This focus on mobility reflects the PLA's response to an increasingly complex and hostile threat environment. The proliferation of UAVs—including swarms and first-person-view (FPV) drones—along with loitering munitions and other precision-guided munitions (PGMs), poses a substantial challenge to maneuver forces. Furthermore, the PLA’s embrace of maneuver warfare and its ambitions for expeditionary operations, such as a potential Taiwan invasion, necessitate highly mobile air defense systems capable of keeping pace with advancing forces.

In contrast, the U.S. military's current M-SHORAD programs appear primarily focused on countering smaller Group 1–3 UAV threats. However, these systems may face significant challenges when confronting more advanced threats, such as saturation attacks or long-range standoff munitions launched from heavy UAVs or rotary-wing attack helicopters.

To address these potential capability gaps, maneuver units will likely require a family of highly mobile air defense systems to counter the diverse spectrum of threats. Attempting to integrate all capabilities onto a single platform would be impractical due to limitations in size, weight, power, cost, and mobility.

A potential M-SHORAD solution could involve deploying three distinct platforms (e.g., JLTV or even notional RCV concepts) at the battalion or company level:

Radar and Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2) Platform: To provide situational awareness and coordinate air defense efforts.
Long-Range Missile Platform: Armed with systems like the AIM-120 / AIM 260 JATM to engage higher-end standoff threats more effectively.
Gun, DE, or HPM Based Platform: Designed to neutralize sUAS / loitering munitons.

That said, this is a nascent approach and presents significant challenges that must be addressed. Successfully integrating these types of platforms would necessitate substantial force structure changes while further complicating already strained logistics chains. However, I remain skeptical that tactical maneuver units can consistently rely on air defense support from higher echelons or joint force assets.

Increasing the Lethality of Light Formations

The U.S. Army has prioritized this objective as a cornerstone of its modernization efforts. Central to the concept are platforms designed to offer both strategic and tactical mobility. These platforms must be easily transportable over long distances and capable of traversing challenging terrain. Additionally, they would be armed with advanced long-range precision weapons—such as loitering munitions, smart mortars, UAVs, and ATGMs—enabling smaller units to deliver significant firepower.

Numerous industry offerings were on full display at the Army’s annual AUSA symposium in October. Zhuhai was no different, with Chinese industry showcasing a formidable array of wheeled howitzers and light tactical vehicles. These systems offer significant firepower in highly mobile and easily deployable packages.

Export Focus

A strong international presence underscored China's ambitious export goals. China is strategically positioned to supplant Russia as a primary arms supplier to many of its traditional partners across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Success in the export market not only bolsters China's diplomatic ties but also enhances the PRC's defense industry by enabling greater investment in research and development and capital expenditures. This, in turn, accelerates technological advancements and helps maintain industrial capacity.

The DoD must view Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) not only as tools for improving interoperability but also as mechanisms to incentivize greater industry participation in critical programs. By leveraging the benefits of aggregate demand and larger production runs, these sales channels could help achieve essential cost savings and strengthen supply chains.

Small Unit Tactical Overmatch

From laser-guided RPGs to new crew-served .338 GPMGs, along with a range of soldier-borne sensors and next-generation vision systems (NGVS), the average PLAGF infantry platoon is becoming increasingly formidable. A comparative analysis of the firepower available to a typical PLA infantry platoon versus its U.S. Army counterpart would provide valuable insights. While both forces would likely rely on assets and capabilities from higher echelons in a conflict, such an analysis remains important, as units could find themselves isolated and forced to operate independently.

This comparative analysis could examine factors such as a platoon’s organic ISR-T capabilities, the range and explosive effects of crew-served platforms, magazine depth across all weapons systems within the formation, overall sustainment requirements, the integration of maneuver enablers like small robotic support vehicles and light tactical vehicles, and key TTPs.