TRANSFORMATION

With the raising of the PLA Strategic Support Force (SSF), China has taken a very significant step forward towards operationalising its military doctrine of fighting and winning informationized wars. Creation of the SSF demonstrates China’s firm conviction that the Information domain has emerged as a daunting new arena of military conflict. In the earlier two parts of this three part series, an insight was given into the concept and broad organizational structure of the SSF, and how its space and IW capabilities have been reorganized. In this concluding part, we discuss how the SSF will fulfil its twin objectives of providing strategic information support and executing strategic information operations, highlight the implications of the creation of SSF on the Indian security scenario and list out the resulting imperatives which need to be urgently addressed by us.

The Strategic Support Forces (SSF) serves to integrate the PLA’s strategic space, cyber, electronic and psychological warfare capabilities under a single organisation. In doing so it also effectively operationalises its two well-known hybrid warfare concepts, namely, Integrated Network Electronic Warfare (INEW) and Three Warfares (comprising of psychological, media and legal warfare). This work studies the concept underlying the reorganisation of the PLA’s space and IW capabilities under the SSF and its implications for India. In the first part of this three part series, an insight was given into the concept and broad organizational structure of the SSF, as also how its space assets have been reorganized. In this part, a look is taken at how the IW capabilities have been restructured under the SSF. It also briefly reviews the closely related intelligence and information processing functions, and how the raising of the SSF has affected them.

The Strategic Support Force (SSF) was created as part of the reforms which were initiated by the PLA in 2015. The integration of strategic space, cyber, electronic and psychological warfare capabilities under the single umbrella of the SSF gives an insight into how the PLA plans to fight informationized wars of the 21st Century. The creation of the SSF is expected to considerably enhance the combat potential of the PLA as a result of increased synergy amongst its space and Information Warfare (IW) capabilities. This work analyses the concept, organisation and operational capabilities of the SSF. It goes on to compare the IW structures of China, United States and India, leading to some noteworthy conclusions and recommendations. In this first part of a three part series, an insight is given into the concept and broad organizational structure of the SSF, as also how its space assets have been re-organized.

This three part series on cyberspace governance in India seeks to analyse whether our existing organisational structures are adequately optimised to address the new challenges emerging in cyberspace, which is fast proving to be a daunting new domain of conflict amongst nations. The first two parts analysed cyber threats and cyber defence strategies, reviewed our existing cyberspace governance architecture and studied global practices adopted by the more agile nations for protecting their respective national cyberspaces. This concluding part proposes several transformative changes to our cyberspace organisational structures as well as to our HRD policies. It is felt that these changes must be implemented on priority if we are to shield ourselves from strategic threats which are imminent in cyberspace in this era of modern warfare.