China’s approach to the interrelated space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains—the main functional and warfighting areas for the Strategic Support Force (SSF) has undergone considerable evolution over the past three decades.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) initiated reforms that have brought dramatic changes to its structure, model of warfighting, and organisational culture. The creation of a Strategic Support Force (SSF) that centralises most PLA space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare capabilities is a boost to the Chinese military. The reforms came at an inflection point as the PLA sought to pivot from land-based territorial defence to extend its power projection to protect Chinese interests in the “strategic frontiers” of space, cyberspace, and the far seas. The PLA views cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare as interconnected subcomponents of information warfare.
The SSF demonstrates China’s evolving understanding of how information serves as a strategic resource in warfare. The PLA recognises that harnessing outer space, the cyber domain, and the electromagnetic spectrum whilst denying their use to adversaries—are paramount needs if China is to attain superiority in any conflict. These three domains are the primary conduits by which a military force collects, processes, transmits and receives information.
The SSF’s design is a logical fit for improving China’s access to space and cyber domains in peacetime and contesting them in wartime. The SSF’s “remote operations” in the far seas and beyond are aimed at achieving strategic national objectives through counter-intervention and power projection. Another important principle that appears to have influenced the design of the SSF is the enduring Maoist imperative of peacetime-wartime integration. From the mid-2000s onward, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) leadership remained convinced that its core responsibility for air defence operations should be gradually extended into space, proposing the strategic operational concept of “integrated air and space operations”.
The lessons China took from the Gulf War radically changed the way that its military planners viewed the future of warfare and changed Chinese thinking on the strategic role of information in warfare. China drew few lessons from the Gulf War. First, the war proved that the widespread integration of information technology in warfare could confer overwhelming military superiority. The operational use of space-based command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) attracted particular notice. The former PLA Second Artillery Force also promoted itself at various points as the best equipped to carry out the military’s space mission set. Its arsenal of short, medium, and long-range ballistic missiles, as well as its inherent status as a strategic service, gave it a strong hand.
The Strategic Support Force was created as part of a broader reorganisation that dissolved the PLA’s four former general departments, incorporating the bulk of their functions into 15 joint force functional organs within an expanded Central Military Commission. Prior to the PLA’s reorganisation space, cyber, and EW units were organised according to mission type disciplines of reconnaissance, attack, or defence. The creation of the SSF and the theatre commands has simplified this process dramatically by organising both China’s conventional and information warfare units into permanent operational groupings that are designed to transition seamlessly into wartime command structures.
The psychological domain constitutes a core element of the PLA’s concept of the “Three Warfare’s”, a unique Chinese warfighting model that calls for the coordinated use of psychological operations, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare to gain an advantage over an adversary. Chinese strategists spent the 2000s focused primarily on applying these concepts and lessons, both through force-wide concepts such as Integrated Network and Electronic Warfare (INEW) and at the operational level. Together, they formed the foundation of a nascent Chinese C4ISR system to enable regional surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision strikes.
The Strategic Support Force’s operational forces are split into two co-equal branches: the Space Systems Department (SSD), which heads up a force responsible for space operations, and the Network Systems Department (NSD), which heads up a force responsible for information operations. Many SSF forces are organised as “bases,” a form of corps leader grade unit that is distinct to the PLA. The space force, in particular, had already largely been organised as bases prior to the creation of the Strategic Security Force.
The Strategic Support Force’s space mission falls under the Space Systems Department, a deputy theatre command leader grade organisation that has been described as the headquarters of China’s military space forces. There is speculation about the SSF’s space force has for anti-satellite research, development, testing, and operations. Both missions could presumably fall under the categories of space attack and defence, respectively, which would place them under the SSF’s remit. Alternatively, these missions may be assigned to the PLA Rocket Force, which already has a role in missile operations or the PLA Air Force (PLAAF).
The Strategic Support Force’s cyber mission has been given to the Network Systems Department, a deputy theatre command leader grade organisation that acts as the headquarters for the SSF’s cyber operations force. Despite its name, the NSD and its subordinate forces are responsible for information warfare more broadly, with a mission set that includes cyber warfare, EW, and psychological warfare. The bulk of China’s strategic cyber forces were previously contained within the technical reconnaissance-focused GSD Third Department, which has been moved en masse into the NSD.
Integrating the cyber warfare and EW elements of the former 3PLA and 4PLA is a crucial step toward fully realising a long-held PLA theory of how best to fight information warfare known as the integrated network and electronic warfare, which envisions the close coordination of cyber and electronic warfare forces in capabilities development and operational use.
The Strategic Support Force also appears to have incorporated elements of the military’s psychological and political warfare missions, a result of the consequential reorganisation of China’s political warfare forces. This mission was encapsulated in a concept developed in the early 2000s known as the “Three Warfare’s”, a unique Chinese political warfare model that calls for the coordinated use of psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare to establish “discursive power” over an adversary— that is the power to control perceptions and shape narratives that advance Chinese interests and undermine those of an opponent.
The first SSF Commander General Gao Jin had emphasised the force’s role in information support by stating that the SSF provides vital support for safeguarding and raising up an ‘information umbrella’. While the SSF’s role in strategic information support largely derives from the plethora of intelligence and communications assets under its space force, the cyber force also maintains a deep bench of technical collection capabilities. The SSF enables and sustains the PLA’s ability to project power in the East and South China seas and into areas beyond the first island chain. The SSF is said to field assets that cover the entirety of the “information chain,” including space-based surveillance, satellite relay and communications and telemetry, tracking, and navigation, all of which are necessary to support these types of remote operations. Long-range precision strike, far seas naval deployments, long-range unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance, and strategic air operations all rely to varying degrees on infrastructure over which the SSF now wields exclusive control.
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