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  • 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

  • A Case Study Of The PRC's Hypersonic Systems Development

         Great Power Competition necessitates understanding with whom one is competing. It also requires understanding the breadth and depth that competition and how your competitor is progressing. Hypersonic systems are an emerging area of military technology with potentially transformative effects.

  • Chinese Views of All-Domain Operations

    Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO), the joint operational concept that has evolved from Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) and then Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), is intended to cope with the military capabilities of Russia and China. Therefore, how Russia’s and China’s defense establishments perceive JADO

  • China’s Air Force Preparing for Contingencies in the Skies Over Ladakh

         Although current clashes along the Line of Actual Control between India and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are contained to hand-to-hand fighting as of mid-June 2020, the death of several dozen soldiers on 15 June reveals the potential for the skirmish to escalate in scale. As Indian and

  • China Achieves Full Global Satellite Coverage

    On 23 June 2020, China launched the final satellite from its Xichang Satellite Launch Center (XSLC) to be part of the BeiDou-3 constellation. The liftoff took place at 09:43 local time using a Long March-3 rocket as the launch vehicle. This marks the final piece in China’s first true Global

  • China's Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    Military-Civil Fusion (MCF), this term seems like a counterpart to the American term civil-military integration (CMI), but in reality it is far deeper and more complex. Whereas, according to the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, America’s CMI is “cooperation between government