The Russian army is currently facing fierce resistance in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, and losses seem to be relatively heavy. If the Russian army had the level of information technology of the Chinese army, perhaps the battle situation would be very different.
In fact, in Russia’s Orient-2018 strategic exercise, Chinese troops wiped out an entire Russian infantry regiment at the beginning of the battle, forcing the 4,390-strong regiment to be eliminated early, according to The Guardian.
The news came as Russian Defense Minister Shoigu confessed to the media that Russia had never suffered such heavy “casualties” since World War II, and that the PLA’s combat performance had completely exceeded his expectations.
What is surprising is that the 78th Army’s armored brigade, including Type 99 main battle tanks, is at the bottom of the group in terms of equipment level, from the use of Type 86 infantry fighting vehicles, an old piece of equipment as an auxiliary force in the armored cluster, we can already see this, not only that, the brigade also retains a large number of Type 63 armored vehicles.
Recently, several Chinese official media focused on the advanced deeds of a medium-sized synthetic brigade of the Chinese Army’s 71st Group Army. “As one of the first digital brigades in the army, the brigade fully exploited the performance of new equipment, improved its command information system and opened up the chain of integrated command, accumulating experience for the construction of the army’s digital brigade.”
The report screen shows that the brigade is mainly equipped with “big eight wheels” assault vehicles, which is what we often call a medium-sized synthetic brigade. Thanks to the advanced informatization system, the brigade defeated a heavy composite unit head-on, reflecting the dominance of the informatization brigade on the modern battlefield.
Thanks to the stronger load capacity, the heavy synthetic brigade with mainly tracked equipment is far superior to the medium-sized synthetic brigade in terms of firepower and protection. For example, the grounding area of a wheeled vehicle is only a portion of the entire tire tread, but for tracked vehicles, the grounding length of each side of the vehicle is almost equal to the distance between the first and last load wheels, which greatly increases the load-carrying capacity.
These advantages also mean thicker armor and more firepower, for example, the most common tracked combat vehicle is the tank, with strong protection and fierce firepower. On the battlefield, tracks also provide better off-road mobility, but at the expense of speed, maximum travel, and increased fuel consumption, all of which are due to the greater rolling resistance that tracks will endure, which in turn is due to the large amount of rubber or metal tracks that will touch the ground, which is where tracks gain the off-road mobility advantage.
“The equipment gap caused by physical limitations has narrowed under the wave of the Army’s digital brigade construction. A medium-sized synthetic brigade of the 71st Group Army has moved from mechanization to digitalization, and then to intelligent and unmanned. constantly improving.”
With the successive services of various information technology equipment and the improvement of the information literacy of officers and soldiers, the command mode of troops, group training mode has changed greatly: externally, by virtue of unmanned reconnaissance, radar reconnaissance, thermal image reconnaissance and other reconnaissance means, real-time battlefield perception capability is greatly enhanced; internally, through satellite positioning and information interconnection, the commander can clearly see the equipment deployment and movement conditions in the command vehicle, and the instructions can go directly to the single soldier; in terms of hardware, the weapons and equipment equipped with the new information system have achieved one-click launch, and every shot is successful.
The key to an information-based force is the word “information”. Zhong Wei, a communications technician of the brigade, said in an interview that before, as a mechanized unit, only a small part of communication equipment was distributed, but now information communication equipment is distributed on a large scale. And they quickly mastered the new equipment.
“Digital thinking has given this unit the wings to multiply its combat power. When the concept changes, the tactics are also updated.” In a red-blue confrontation exercise last year, facing the heavy armor-equipped mechanized synthetic troops, Zhong Wei led the digital team to give full play to the advantages of information technology, to provide strong support for the final victory.
The “descending strike” against the mechanized unit not only showed the opponent the power of technology applied to the battlefield, but also showed Zhong Wei the development direction of digital troops. He said, “The state of you (the opponent) on the battlefield is fully transparent, I am clear where you move…You can’t command all your communications, how could you fight anymore?”
With the support of information technology, the brigade artillery detachment breaks through the equipment’s own limitations, creating a new method of artillery mobile combat – “cruise shooting”. In June last year, in a special fire strike training exercise in Jiuquan, Gansu, the artillery battalion of the brigade relied on an efficient command and information platform, used two new types of artillery, and used a new combat method of fast and short-stop mobile cruising shooting, which greatly improved the response speed and achieves “excellent” shooting accuracy at the extreme distance of all artillery.