By Li Qinghua and Yang Qingmin
BEIJING, June 20 (ChinaMil) -- The Chinese people’s Liberation Army (PLA) Army conducted first operations command capability assessment for its thirteen Group Army commanders on June 19, 2018. The assessment was open, fair and transparent. The PLA Army formed 13 disciplinary inspection teams to fully supervise the assessment sites in the 13 Group Armies.
The 13 army commanders were assessed at their own command posts, which was broadcasted via video to more than 3,600 troops at both the main venue and 24 branch venues. During the assessment, they received random questions and on-site judgments from the leaders of the PLA Army and the experts from the military academies.
The assessment consisted of six steps:
1. Twenty-four hours prior to the assessment, the scenario conditions are distributed through military confidential system to the army commander who is going to receive assessment;
2. The army commander, together with 15 selected staff officers and relying on the field command post and the integrated command platform, formulate operations orders and determination diagrams under enclosed environment;
3. The army commander must complete dictating the key points of his operations determination within 40 minutes;
4. The army commander randomly selects 2 questions related to the operations determination through automatic question generation systemand answer them on site;
5. The panel of judges composed of 12 experts and professors assesses the army commander's performances in the above two steps and gives out scores on the spot.
6. The panel of experts scores the operations documents of the army commander and his unit by way of blind assessment. This score is then combined with those obtained in the above steps to produce a comprehensive score for the army commander.
According to the result of drawing lots, the first army commander to be assessed was Maj. Gen. Gong Maodong, commander of the 75th Group Army of the PLA Southern Theater Command.
Following Gong, the other army commanders from the 74th Group Army and 73rd Group Army and so on were successively assessed in order. Each army commander was subjected to inquiry, questioning and judgment according to his troops' functions and combat missions.
At the assessment site, a leader of the PLA Army said: “Command is the key factor that decides whether the military can fight and win a battle. The battle commander's capability is always the decisive thing in wars.”