New Speacial forces pictures
- Thread starter petty officer1
- Start date
szbd
Junior Member
Actually the PLA logistics part is quite advanced compared to weaponary.
First, I guess it's safe to say PLA eat the best among the world's armies. Because food is considered one of the most important factors in maneuvering your troop and Chinese are very very serious about food. The four top factors are move, eat, hide and fight. Fight is the last one and eat is the second. This is one of the solid traditions in PLA for 80 years. In 80s most of the PLA units need to produce part of their own food. That's a shame, yes. The order from the chief logistic department was every unit must produce 750g of vegetable, 50g food oil, 50g meat, 50g egg/bird(chicken, duck, goose)/fish and 50g tofu for each soldier everyday, the government provides the rest. Another order from the chief logistic department was egg must cooked as a whole, not in the soup, to guaranttee the quantity for each soilder. During admirals, presidents and prime ministers' inspections, they often check how soldiers eat. They ask detailed questions about food. Now the lowest food level is 10 yuan/day/person. That averagingly equals to 750g of pork or 500g of beef in supermarkets in China. While PLA got subsidied wholesale price, so, it's like you have 20 yuan or more to buy food in supermarket and get profesionals to cook for you. How much you can get from 20 yuan? That's 750g pork (10)+1kg vegetable (3)+500g milk(1.5)+100g egg(0.7)+500g fruit(2), these are must have in the order. And you need to find some way to spend the rest. Remember, this is the lowest food level. Also there are detailed orders about taste, there are various kind of equipments for cooking including field use. In the exercise, how much time you can provide enough food according to the standard is an important issue and often mensioned in the reports on PLA daily.
This is the standard field tent of PLA. Not every unit equippted, but they are doing it. Notice the two pipes on the left, that connects AC. The tent has NBC protection, water and fire proof, resistent to 8 level wind, and very good Insulation. The truck on the far right is a shower truck. Also, the camouflage can be easily changed and have been tested against infrared, LLL, etc.
This is the inside of a tent on Karakunlun mountains, 5000 meters high. Notice the date of the photo, 02/02/02.
Nice info! You seem to know a lot about the PLA. I never considered food to be so important a motivating force, but it makes so much sense. I think food is often overlooked when talking about motivation, or maybe not since you can expect some food at any meeting event.
Well food is the number one motivation in the field.
In guncrews the foodissue was always proplematic as the food arrived everytime to the battery's HQ from the battalion. The HQ was always approx. 1 km away from the guns so to get the food to the guns was an effort alone. And you cannot just leave the cannon, there always needed to be at least three guys around (the minium required for firing) so few guys would pick the food for the entire crew. I hardly ever had to pick the food becouse I was either aimer or the gunleader and those two would always needed to be with the gun. My popularity wasen't at highest during the lunch time
.
Also by some weird quirk the food arrived everytime when we started to shoot so it was always a bit of a circus. The firing suffered as we had too few guys in the gun and the food was cold and you didn't got time to eat it properly, just stuff it to your mouth as much as possiple and as fast as possiple in between the shots. And you always needed to be sure where to put the cantin during the firings...too often we just left them atop the engineerbox...after firing fullcharges with the 122mm...well the cantins weren't atop the engineerbox any longer.
Food, dryness and sleep is the three fundamental elements that are the most important factors to your morale. Forget political trainings, fighting for freedom or other abstract motivation attepts (read BS) just give your troops food, a change to dry and at least few hours a sleep and you got yourself an army...
In guncrews the foodissue was always proplematic as the food arrived everytime to the battery's HQ from the battalion. The HQ was always approx. 1 km away from the guns so to get the food to the guns was an effort alone. And you cannot just leave the cannon, there always needed to be at least three guys around (the minium required for firing) so few guys would pick the food for the entire crew. I hardly ever had to pick the food becouse I was either aimer or the gunleader and those two would always needed to be with the gun. My popularity wasen't at highest during the lunch time
. Also by some weird quirk the food arrived everytime when we started to shoot so it was always a bit of a circus. The firing suffered as we had too few guys in the gun and the food was cold and you didn't got time to eat it properly, just stuff it to your mouth as much as possiple and as fast as possiple in between the shots. And you always needed to be sure where to put the cantin during the firings...too often we just left them atop the engineerbox...after firing fullcharges with the 122mm...well the cantins weren't atop the engineerbox any longer.
Food, dryness and sleep is the three fundamental elements that are the most important factors to your morale. Forget political trainings, fighting for freedom or other abstract motivation attepts (read BS) just give your troops food, a change to dry and at least few hours a sleep and you got yourself an army...
I would say the tradition of PLA's producing food didn't start in 1980s, but traced back to its early guerilla warfare time. It makes sense if you don't have the logistic system so you grow your own food.
And that tradition didn't stop in 50-70s. At that time the whole China was put under a ratio system, urban population didn't have enough food(when I was kid, my family of 4 could get 1kg pork/mon, 1kg egg/mon, etc), rural people even worse, although they produced them. So PLA were required to produce most of the food themselves, not to compete with civilians. But the soldiers' food were not subject to the civilian ratio system. I saw the elite 38th army growing vegitable in early 70s(they're called in by Mashal Lin Biao to prepare the possible Soviet strike, and stationed around our buildings).
1980s saw the PLA commercialized, since the defence budget was reduced each year and PLA even didn't have enough money to maintain itself. Deng allowed them to get involved in bussiness to raise fund. My father talked to a PLA regiment command in 80s, their unit did coal mine business and made a lot of money(free labor anyway). PLA got to thank a lot to Americans if it's not Taiwan, the high level officials will never think of, or allow to give them today's budget.
And that tradition didn't stop in 50-70s. At that time the whole China was put under a ratio system, urban population didn't have enough food(when I was kid, my family of 4 could get 1kg pork/mon, 1kg egg/mon, etc), rural people even worse, although they produced them. So PLA were required to produce most of the food themselves, not to compete with civilians. But the soldiers' food were not subject to the civilian ratio system. I saw the elite 38th army growing vegitable in early 70s(they're called in by Mashal Lin Biao to prepare the possible Soviet strike, and stationed around our buildings).
1980s saw the PLA commercialized, since the defence budget was reduced each year and PLA even didn't have enough money to maintain itself. Deng allowed them to get involved in bussiness to raise fund. My father talked to a PLA regiment command in 80s, their unit did coal mine business and made a lot of money(free labor anyway). PLA got to thank a lot to Americans if it's not Taiwan, the high level officials will never think of, or allow to give them today's budget.
szbd
Junior Member
Well food is the number one motivation in the field.
In guncrews the foodissue was always proplematic as the food arrived everytime to the battery's HQ from the battalion. The HQ was always approx. 1 km away from the guns so to get the food to the guns was an effort alone. And you cannot just leave the cannon, there always needed to be at least three guys around (the minium required for firing) so few guys would pick the food for the entire crew. I hardly ever had to pick the food becouse I was either aimer or the gunleader and those two would always needed to be with the gun. My popularity wasen't at highest during the lunch time
Also by some weird quirk the food arrived everytime when we started to shoot so it was always a bit of a circus. The firing suffered as we had too few guys in the gun and the food was cold and you didn't got time to eat it properly, just stuff it to your mouth as much as possiple and as fast as possiple in between the shots. And you always needed to be sure where to put the cantin during the firings...too often we just left them atop the engineerbox...after firing fullcharges with the 122mm...well the cantins weren't atop the engineerbox any longer.
Food, dryness and sleep is the three fundamental elements that are the most important factors to your morale. Forget political trainings, fighting for freedom or other abstract motivation attepts (read BS) just give your troops food, a change to dry and at least few hours a sleep and you got yourself an army...
From the reports, it seems providing your company with standard food (4 different types of dishes, 1 type of soup, 2 types of mainfood) in 25mins without enemy detection is considered excellent. This is often mensioned in PLA daily's report about exercises. For example this one:
oops, this unit used 45 mins. But they are a transport regement in tibet, and they did this at the temperature of -15 degree. It says they conducted a 15 day exercise, crossed 8 >5000m mountains and 164 streams ON TIBET PLATEAU. And their priority sequence seems to be move, fight, eat, camp, hide, repair. I don't understand why the hell fight is the second important for a transport regiment. May be the reporter messed up. They also had exercise pretending under enemy fire and chemical attack.
