China’s Joint Swords 2024B
A special assessment examining what the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is seeking to achieve, and what they and Western intelligence agencies might learn.
Just last week, Taiwan celebrated its national day. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te gave an address on 10 October that included a statement that China "has no right to represent Taiwan" and that his mission as president would be to "resist annexation or encroachment upon our sovereignty."
After the speech by the President of Taiwan, the predictable Chinese Communist Party response arrived. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning stated that Lai had tried to “sell the fallacy of Taiwan independence,” and accused him of a “pernicious intention to escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait for political gain.”
As I wrote in my last weekly update, there was some speculation in the wake of the Chinese statement that the PLA would use Lai's National Day speech as a pretext to launch military exercises around Taiwan, similar to the Joint Swords 2024A exercise conducted in May this year. While PLA activity around Taiwan immediately after the Taiwanese president’s speech held steady for a couple of days at an average of 10-20 aircraft and 4-7 ships, the situation changed in the past 24 hours.
China’s military announced that it would be commencing military exercises around Taiwan. This new exercise was described by the Chinese regime as a “stern warning to the separatist acts of Taiwan Independence forces.” Following in a similar vein to the May 2024 ‘punishment exercises’ conducted around Taiwan, these new military drills would be called Exercise Joint Sword-2024B.
According to spokesmen from China’s defence ministry and its Eastern Theatre Command, the new exercise is designed “to test the joint operations capabilities of the theatre command's troops.” Further, the exercise would include “vessels and aircraft approaching Taiwan island in close proximity from different directions, troops of multiple services engage in joint drills, focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas, assault on maritime and ground targets, as well as joint seizure of comprehensive superiority.”
The aim of this article is to explore this new activity and the military organisation that will command Joint Swords 2024B, the Eastern Theatre Command. Additionally, I will explore the likely Chinese objectives for Joint Swords 2024B as well as what the intelligence agencies in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Japan and Australia might be seeking to learn from this new Chinese military exercise.
Rehearsing the Chinese Theatre Commands
An important objective of Joint Swords 2024B is to test the capacity of the commanders, staff, units and overall command and control of the Eastern Theatre Command. This command is one of the new joint commands established as part of a transformation of the PLA into a more integrated warfighting organisation.
As I covered in my May 2024 article on Joint Swords 2024A, there are five theatre commands in the PLA, and these were established in 2016. Each command receives its orders directly from the Central Military Committee in Beijing and is assigned the operational authority over PLA organisations within its theatre. The Chinese theatre commands are responsible for developing and wargaming theatre-specific plans for warfighting, responding to natural disasters and military contingencies, as well as the day-to-day operations focussed on Chinese sovereignty, which includes the kind of coercive military activities conducted daily around Taiwan.
The Eastern Theatre Command has a wide variety of joint military resources to carry out its mission. This includes three PLA Ground Forces Group Armies (71st, 72nd, and 73rd) which each have around six combat brigades as well as other supporting brigades (aviation, special operations, artillery, engineers). The Eastern Theatre Command also commands the Eastern Theatre Navy, its naval aviation division, coastal defence units and two marine brigades. It also has 13 Air Force fighter and UAV brigades and regiments as well as a Bomber Division (equipped with different H6 variants).
During exercises and warfighting operations, the Eastern Theatre Command will likely be allocated elements of the PLA’s Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force and Joint Logistic Support Force as well as elements of the PLA Rocket Force. Indeed, part of today’s announcement includes the PLA Rocket Force units, and I will return to that later in the piece.
The primary mission of the Eastern Theatre Command is Taiwan, although it also has responsibility for Japan and contingencies in and around the Senkaku Islands. The announcement of Joint Swords 2024B represents a continuation of this command’s increasingly larger and more complex joint exercises around Taiwan.
Joint Swords 2024B Objectives
In conducting large joint exercises such as Joint Swords 2024B, the PLA will have multiple objectives.
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