13 May 2026

Plug and Play ร€ La PLA

Anushka Saxena

On May 6, 2026, the PLA Daily published an interesting article pertaining to the Eastern Theater Command Navy utilising “plug-and-play” (PaP) modular combat units (ๅณๆ’ๅณ็”จ็š„ๆจกๅ—ๅŒ–ไฝœๆˆ˜ๅ•ๅ…ƒ) for rehearsing integrated deployments and “systems-of-systems” operational tactics.

Across Chinese-language military press over the past 5 years, the idea of these “plug-and-play” (ๅณๆ’ๅณ็”จ) modular combat units has moved from theory/ doctrine to a routine element of combat preparedness drills. In May 2020, a long PLA Daily article by Zhao Zhongqi and Nan Dangshe, “Building New-Type Precision Combat Units (ๆ‰“้€ ๆ–ฐๅž‹็ฒพ็กฎไฝœๆˆ˜ๅ•ๅ…ƒ)” likely delved for the first time into doctrinal commentary on how “foreign militaries” were implementing concepts like joint all-domain operations, joint all-domain command & control, and multi-domain operations. Unmistakably, this is a reference to the US’s JADO/ JADC2/ MDO doctrines.

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