Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Oh Yeah, the Paratroopers are Air Force

China's exercises practicing an invasion of Taiwan so far this year puzzled me by not mentioning airborne forces. Since I think that force represents the bulk of the first wave of invaders, it seemed a major gap in their exercises.

But then I saw an article noting the two major exercises with this sentence:

[Maochun Yu, a professor at the United States Naval Academy,] also stated that an upcoming military exercise will be led by the PLA air force.

And it dawned on me. China's airborne troops are commanded by the PLA air force.

So there you go.

This remains my best judgment on the general form of a Chinese invasion.