CMSI Translations are translations of articles pulled from Chinese military maritime publications.
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CMSI Translations #15: Inscribing Loyalty While Endeavoring to Advance into the Deep Blue
Qian Xiaohu, Mo Xiaoliang, Wang Guanbiao, and Liu Bin
The sea and sky blend into a singular shade, with starlight accompanying the ship’s voyage. Somewhere the vast Pacific, the Chinese Navy's aircraft carrier formation is organizing to train, and the destroyer Nanchang, joining a carrier formation for the first time, is tasked with escort duty. Suddenly, two foreign vessels turn a wide arc one after the other and speed toward the carrier formation. “This is Chinese Navy Ship 101, please keep a safe distance from me and inform me of your intentions.” Nanchang quickly maneuvers and firmly maintains its position in the carrier formation. Simultaneously, the ship’s officer of the deck shouts a warning. The foreign vessels make several unsuccessful attempts to cross the formation but have no choice in the end except to resentfully turn away and depart the area. Endeavoring to advance into the deep blue, in each thrilling and important mission, the Nanchang’s Party Committee team is always ensuring that “The ship is maneuvered by us, and we listen to the guidance of the Party,” leading the officers and sailors as they repeatedly overcome risks and challenges faced. The leaders of the Nanchang’s Party Committee told reporters, “only a combat formation that is loyal to the Party while being tough and powerful can route all enemies and prevail in all engagements.”
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CMSI Translations #14: Manual for Developing Ship Captains
Liu Xue and Li Mingyu
In 1949, the People's Navy set sail from Baimamiao in Jiangsu province. Throughout its journey, the People's Navy has produced numerous heroes, and an increasing number of talented personnel of all types have accelerated their growth on the deep blue waterways. Among them, Navy surface ship captains have become a shining group. How can young aspirants with dreams become captains?
The Dalian Naval Vessel Academy was established on November 22, 1949. It primarily focuses on cultivating military and political command officers for the Navy's surface forces, as well as technical officers in marine hydrology and surveying. Over the past 70 years since its founding, the Academy has trained more than 50,000 military and political command officers for the People's Navy, over 80 percent of ship captains, and more than 200 admirals of the Republic, earning a reputation as the "cradle of naval officers."
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CMSI Translations #13: Mission Command Is Not The Antidote
Cui Yiliang
“Mission command” (renwushi zhihui) has become a buzzword across all branches of the U.S. military. The concept came into being in the early 19th century, borne from Prussian military experience, and became a treasured concept in Prussian/German military doctrine. Simply put, mission command is the delegation of decision-making power. The reason for delegating or subordinating decision-making is because, when compared with higher echelon command, front line units often have better situational awareness of their given area, and delegation of decision making authority can allow them to fully utilize this cognitive advantage and seize the time critical battle initiative.
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CMSI Translations #12: Strengthen Command Capabilities to Win Future Naval Battles
Wei Gong
Chairman Xi Jinping's emphasis on "strengthening command capabilities" has indicated the direction of effort and injected a powerful impetus for all-level commanders to fulfill their main responsibilities, meet challenges from adversaries, and win future naval battles. Observing the emerging patterns of new combat capabilities in new domains and reviewing the year's work to prepare for war, in the case of new combat platforms, commanders’ ability to strengthen their command capabilities is reflected in their dual responsibility for both the platform and the system. This includes the responsibilities to scientifically coordinate maneuver and firepower to address threats from individual ships and aircraft, to fulfill responsibilities for domain specific operational tasks, and to serve as a system hub for new combat power and shaping advantageous combat postures for the formations and systems. These responsibilities expand the meaning of command capabilities and place higher demands on commanders.
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CMSI Translations #11: Mid-Life Overhaul and Upgrade of the Type 052C Guided Missile Destroyer
Ju Lang
The construction of the Type 052C guided missile destroyer took a long time, and it was experimental in the sense of "taking small steps for rapid progress" (xiao bu kuai pao). In fact, it was also the engineering prototype of the standard fleet destroyer Type 052D. The first and second Type 052C ships were launched in April and October 2003, respectively. They were the most advanced guided missile destroyers of the PLAN at that time, but the subsequent four ships of the same type were launched in October 2010, July 2011, and January and July 2012, respectively.
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CMSI Translations #10: Transformation, How Significant is the Role of an Airfield Station?
Gao Hongwei, Shen Hongquan, and Zhang Tong
In recent years, with the expansion of mission tasks, multiple services and multiple aircraft types organizing training at the same Southern Theater Command Navy aviation airfield station has gradually become the norm. In the face of increasingly heavy combat training support tasks, they closely monitor powerful enem(ies), accelerate transformation and construction, and have achieved a historic leap from single aircraft-type support to multiple aircraft-types support, from small flying periods of short-term deployed training support to large flying periods of regularized deployed training support, and from daytime simple meteorological conditions support to allweather support, with core support capabilities being comprehensively enhanced.
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CMSI Translations #9: Mine Countermeasure Operations in a Cross-Strait Island Landing Campaign
Tian Ying
Sea mines are a type of cheap, easy to produce naval weapon that can be used both offensively and defensively. They have played a huge tactical role and even a strategic role in many wars from ancient times to the present day. Sea mines have low production costs, and they are powerful, simple to use, easy to emplace, and difficult to remove. They are characterized by the long-term threat they can pose to ports and shipping lanes. Countering sea mines is relatively difficult and requires the expenditure of rather large resources by the side conducting mine countermeasure operations.
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CMSI Translations #8: U.S.-Philippine Military Cooperation in the South China Sea: Challenges and Responses
Zhang Yilong
With the new generation of Philippine government taking office, U.S.-Philippines relations have rapidly warmed, and the depth and breadth of their military cooperation have increased. This has brought new challenges and threats to China’s national security. How to deal with these challenges will be a difficult problem before us.
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CMSI Translations #7: Guarantee of Strategic Security: Expert Discusses China’s Strategic Nuclear Submarines Achieving Continuous Duty
Chi Guocang
In April of this year, the U.S. Department of Defense released a China military power report, which stated that the Chinese Navy currently has at least six Type 094 ballistic missile nuclear submarines, and has the capability for at least one of them to be on continuous readiness duty. It also said that this is the first time it has been possible for the Chinese Navy to permanently maintain at least one strategic missile nuclear submarine at sea to perform strategic duty tasks. So, what is “continuous readiness duty” (quatianhou zhanbei zhiban), how can it be achieved, and why did the Chinese Navy only just now acquire this capability? With these questions in mind, we interviewed Professor Chi Guocang (迟国仓) of the PLAN Submarine Academy and asked him to give us a detailed explanation.
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CMSI Translations #6: Building a World-Class Navy in a Comprehensive Way: It's Logic in Theory, History, and Practice
Liu Lijiao and Jia Benjia
"Building a world-class navy in a comprehensive way" is a vivid embodiment and concrete manifestation of the Chinese Communist Party's goal of building a strong military in the new era, as expressed in the domain of naval building and operations. This is both a major theoretical issue and practical issue. When it comes to realizing the centenary military building goal and creating a new situation via naval modernization, this will have major and far-reaching importance. [We must] deeply understand its internal logic in theory, history, and practice to accelerate naval transformation and development, and elevate at-dea deterrence and combat capabilities.
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CMSI Translations #5: Strengthen National Defense Mobilization and Reserve Force Construction
Yu Yunxian and Zhang Pengxuan
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party proposed "strengthening national defense mobilization and reserve force construction." In the face of the Era's requirements for strengthening the country and the military, the serious situation of national security, and the real existence of the risk of war, we must place the construction of national defense mobilization and reserve forces in a more important strategic position, and strive to promote the high-quality development of national defense mobilization and reserve force construction from a new starting point.
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CMSI Translations #4: Charging into Battle—A Deeply Entwined Network: A Profile of Wang Chengfei, Director of a Research Office at the Naval Research Academy
Wang Kun, Ye Zhong, and Zhou Huaiping
Wang Chengfei, Director of a research office and senior engineer at the Naval Research Academy, has presided over the initiation and evaluation of several major comprehensive information system equipment projects. He has compiled a development guide and technical requirements for Navy unmanned intelligent equipment technology systems, filled many specifications gaps, won a second- class Military Science and Technology Progress Award, obtained eight national defense patents, and was once awarded a third-class citation.
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CMSI Translations #3: Discussion on the Requirements and Methods of Intelligent Decision-Making in Torpedo Attacks by Unmanned Underwater Vehicles
Ma Liang, Guo Liqiang, Zhang Hui, Yang Jing, and Liu Jian
Autonomous technology in unmanned equipment is currently the most dynamic frontier technology field, and improving the level of intelligent decision-making is an inevitable trend in the development of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Torpedo attack decision-making is an important part of attack-type UUVs' attack missions, and it is also the basis and premise for forming self-organizing cross-domain collaboration, autonomous cluster confrontation, and other operational capabilities. Beginning by sorting through the characteristics of operational use and typical mission styles, this article summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of UUVs compared to manned platforms, analyzes the decision-making content different from traditional torpedo attacks, expounds on the key issues that need to be resolved in implementing decisionmaking functions, and, based on the development status of machine learning technology, proposes an intelligent decision-making method suitable for solving problems such as large uncertainty in observation data, difficulty in guaranteeing real-time attack decision-making, and weak model perception interaction capabilities. This research can serve as a reference for future research in unmanned equipment development and intelligent decision-making fields.
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CMSI Translations #2: Dominating the Battlefield—The Advantages of Unmanned Intelligent Combat Forces
Zhao Xiangang and Su Yanqin
In his report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping emphasized the need to accelerate the development of unmanned intelligent combat forces. Looking at the practice of local wars in recent years, unmanned combat forces as represented by drones have become an important part of the joint operational force system, playing an increasingly prominent role as an effectiveness multiplier. Especially with the advent of artificial intelligence technology and its rapid development and widespread use in the military field, unmanned systems are becoming more intelligent and autonomous, and unmanned intelligent operations are showing advantages and effectiveness that are different from those in the past.
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CMSI Translations #1: The “Cans” and “Cannots” of the Military Application of Artificial intelligence
Zhang Long
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military field is an important force for promoting improvements in military technology and progress in the revolution of military affairs and is a key driver changing operational patterns and disrupting the form of war. In the upsurge of military applications of AI, we must think carefully about future decisions, deeply understand the technological hub (jishu shuniu) role of AI, dialectically view the functional boundaries of military applications of AI, and accurately grasp what AI "can" and "cannot" do. We must oppose both contemptuous and omnipotent theories of AI military application, comprehensively and objectively clarify what AI "can" and "cannot" do in military applications, and strive to seize the opportunity, win the initiative, develop systematically, and make breakthroughs in the military application of AI.
