17 October 2013

China’s Air Force Comes of Age

Robert Farley, China’s Air Force Comes of Age,” The Diplomat, 17 October 2013.

A recent Andrew Erickson report detailed the constellation of institutional interest and cooperation behind the PLAN’s ongoing deployment to the Gulf of Aden. As Erickson notes, the deployment has required a substantial degree of interagency cooperation, and seems, by and large, to be meeting the needs of those institutions.

Of all the institutional challenges that modern militaries face, however, none compares to complexity of managing the need for and provision of airpower. On that metric, how is the People’s Liberation Army Air Force doing? …

For the full text of the report cited here, see Andrew S. Erickson and Austin M. Strange, “The Relevant Organs: Institutional Factors behind China’s Gulf of Aden Deployment,” Jamestown Foundation China Brief 13.20 (10 October 2013).