Ever since China began a major round of military reforms in 2016, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has never stopped pursuing organizational restructuring. Amid that process, lessons learned from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War pushed the PLA to make adjustments to the command and management of aerospace-related forces in particular.

Observation from CCTV images 

On January 24, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid an inspection visit to a unit of the Northern Theater Command as part of his concern for military personnel prior to the Lunar New Year. During the visit, Xi extended his “Happy New Year” greetings to grassroots service members in different parts of the country via video calls. The video calls covered various units around the country, including a squad from an army brigade of the Southern Theater Command, an on-duty division of a shore-based anti-ship missile naval regiment of the Eastern Theater Command, a surface-to-air missile battalion of the Air Force of the Central Theater Command, a monitoring and early warning station of the Aerospace Force, the 2nd battalion of a transportation regiment of the Zhengzhou Joint Logistics Support Center, and the 3rd battalion of the Shigatse detachment of the People’s Armed Police Tibet Corps. 

The most noteworthy among these video clips showed the monitoring and early warning station of the Aerospace Force. From the disclosed images, it can be observed that the station has a large strategic early warning radar, specifically a P-band phased array radar. It is intended to serve as part of China’s ballistic missile early warning system. According to Chinese media reports, the radar has already been assigned to the Aerospace Force, which is

© The Diplomat