Great weapons in the hands of mediocre troops are just expensive piles of junk in the end if they go up against well-trained troops with lesser weapons.
So this is an unwelcome piece of news:
Twenty years after the U.S. Army started using its revolutionary National Training Center (NTC) to give troops combat experience in peacetime, China is opening its own version. The Chinese NTC is larger than the U.S. one (359,000 acres in the Mohave desert at Ft Irwin, California.) The Chinese center is to be used for training divisions, while the U.S. one trains only a brigade at a time.
A day later another post on Strategypage says that infantry and mechanized units will rotate through the facility:
China is increasing the training of up to twenty combat divisions (infantry and mechanized), upgrading equipment and personnel as well. A special combat training center, modeled on the American National Training Center, has been established, and these elite combat divisions will start rotating through the training center. Only a few years of this kind of training will give China a powerful, by world standards, combat force.
Now just because paratroopers, Marines, and amphibious-earmarked infantry divisions aren't mentioned doesn't mean they won't be part of the mix. Perhaps the Chinese just don't want to admit these units are going to be trained. Perhaps these more specialized units are considered well trained enough. Perhaps the paratroopers are even considered expendible and their main use will simply be landing and sowing confusion whether they survive or not--so additional training is pointless.
But if the airborne, airmobile, Marine, and regular army divisions earmarked for amphibious work are run through the Chinese NTC, I'd seriously start to worry about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Alternately, if mechanized units are in fact the major beneficiaries of this facility, perhaps the Russians should worry a bit more about their slavish devotion to arming China. Moscow may not be as clever as they think they are in their effort to point China south at America instead of north to Russia.
But by all means, pay attention to who gets trained at this new and expensive Chinese training facility. This is the key to success rather than relying on advanced weapons.
