Home > Land Warfare Systems

The Ground Forces of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) deploys about 8,000 tanks, 4,000 armoured vehicles, and some 25,000 artillery pieces. New-generation weaponry are being introduced to replace the bulk of the antiquated 1950s-era Soviet designs.

Armour. The number of tanks deployed by the PLA ground forces is estimated to be 6,000~8,000. Among these about 2,200 are relatively modern designs including the Type 99 (200~300), Type 96 (1,500), and Type 88 (500). Some motorised infantry divisions and brigades (truck mobile) have been transformed into mechanised units equipped with tracked and wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APC). Former tank divisions and brigades are now called "armoured" units to reflect their more combined arms nature. At least 40% of PLA divisions and brigades are now mechanised or armoured.

Fire-Support. The artillery research, development and production have continued to emphasise qualitative improvements to the PLA's artillery forces over quantitative production. Particularly the PLA has made impressive progress on the long-range multiple rocket launcher and self-propelled artillery system.

Specialised Units. While the overall size of the PLA ground forces continues to shrink, technology-intensive elements within the ground forces such as special operations forces (SOF), army aviation (helicopters), surface-to-air missile (SAM), and electronic warfare units have all been expanding rapidly.

Information-Centric Warfare. The PLA has paid close attention to the performance of the US ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. As well as learning from the success of the US military in information-centric warfare, joint operations, C4ISR, hi-tech weaponry, etc. the PLA is also studying the unconventional tactics that could be used to exploit the vulnerabilities of a more technologically-advanced enemy. This has been reflected in the two parallel guidelines for the PLA ground forces development. While speeding up the process of introducing new equipment into the force and retiring the older equipment, the PLA also emphasises on finding ways of using existing equipment to defeat an enemy with technology dominance.