The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

The second stage is the comprehensive development
stage in which information systems are horizontally
integrated and changes are made in a military’s organizational
structure, training, and education. The U.S.
military is described as being in the middle to later part
of this stage.
The third stage is the overall transformation stage. This
stage reflects a maturation of the informationization
process in which a military carries out system-to-system
attacks around the information flows on the ground, the
sea, the air, the space, the electromagentic domain, the
network, and the sensory dimensions.
Dai concludes that the PLA is in the beginning stages
of comprehensive development or in the transition
between the first stage and the second stage. Dai also
concludes that the PLA is in the preliminary stages of
constructing an informationized organization management
system that has focused on top-level design,
improved regulations and standards, infrastructure,
and making breakthroughs in key points. 91
The PLA’s own timetable offers a final metric by
which to judge progress in jointness. According to
the 2008 Defense White Paper, the PLA has the goal of
laying a foundation for informationization by 2010,
to make major progress by 2020, and to mostly reach
the goal of informationization by 2050. The establishment
of a joint CMC, a Joint Logistics Department, a
joint training structure test bed, and the conducting
of the first war zone-level joint exercise has been conducted.
Moreover, individual services and MRs have
made impressive gains in technology, including the
first joint war-zone C4ISR system established by the
Guangzhou MR. By this measure, it appears that the
PLA is meeting its own standards for joint reform.
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