On September 3, 2025, China held the 17th military parade since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which featured a multi-dimensional display of 45 formations, including marching formations, equipment drive-bys, and aerial flyovers. Following Xi Jinping’s directive to accelerate the development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a world-class military, the PLA has established a new force structure of “four services and four arms” and a modern warfare concept of “information dominance, system support, elite force operations, and winning through jointness.”
Since the PLA replaced the Strategic Support Force in April 2024 with three strategic arms—the Aerospace Force (ASF), Cyberspace Force (CSF), and Information Support Force (ISF)—the Chinese government had provided only high-level descriptions of these units and their missions. The military parade provided observers and analysts with an opportunity to further examine their roles. The three strategic arms not only paraded independently in front of Tiananmen Square for the first time, but their equipment was also organized into three formations within a single Information Operations Group (IOG). This joint organization is a reflection of the PLA’s combat model in which these arms are functionally complementary in the information operations kill chain and are essential to integrating the operations of all PLA services.
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