The director for intelligence (J2) for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) this week pointed out a weakness in China’s military readiness to potentially attack Taiwan and how Russia owes China now amid the Ukraine war.

Rear Adm. Thomas Henderschedt said while the U.S. and its allies’ militaries have a strong ability for forces to understand and execute commander’s intent through structures like a strong non-commissioned officer corps (NCO) even in a denied command and control environment, China’s People Liberation Army (PLA) has a “fundamental issue” in countering that. 

Rear Adm. Thomas Henderschedt, director for intelligence (J2) for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. (Photo: U.S. Navy)
Rear Adm. Thomas Henderschedt, director for intelligence (J2) for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

“I think that’s a fundamental issue for the PLA. I think it’s a challenge, that’s not just an issue for the PLA, but it’s a societal challenge for the CCP to do,” Henderschedt said during a virtual Intelligence and National Security Alliance event on Oct. 10.

Henderschedt said earlier in his career, after a first tour in Beijing with the Marine Corps attache, they wrote a”myth busting paper” about the PLA, which included mission command issues.

“What we observed was an inability of a PLA NCO to really be empowered by a unit commander through mission command to be able to achieve Commander’s Intent. That has not changed,” he said.

Henderschedt served as the assistant naval attaché in China from 2006-2009 and as naval attaché from 2016-2020 and defense attaché before becoming the director for intelligence at INDOPACOM.

Henderschedt said the Chinese military is trying to “negate that weakness through technology” but he said many in the U.S. would say technology cannot solve that kind of problem because warfare is more of an art than a science.

“That’s a socializing problem,” he said. “I think the PLA is quite confident in the fact that warfare fundamentally to the PLA is a scientific endeavor. In the U.S. and the West, we look at warfare as more of an art than a science. Because it’s a science, the PLA, they believe there’s a scientific solution for the problem, and are looking to leverage Big Data/AI to be able to kind of recreate a technological mission command.”

Therefore, Henderschedt said he thinks command and control is one of the main issues that will challenge the PLA in any potential invasion attempt of Taiwan.

Separately, he said there has been “complete role reversals” between Russia and China’s relationship in the past two years.

While Russia previously had supremacy in the bilateral relationship between military superiority and what they would allow in joint exercises, Russia now owes China due to its war with Ukraine.

People's Liberation Army's Bayi Building in Beijing, China. (DoD photo by Army Sgt. Amber I. Smith)
People’s Liberation Army’s Bayi Building in Beijing, China. (DoD photo by Army Sgt. Amber I. Smith)

“I spent the last six years in Beijing and even watching some of the requests from the Chinese to the Russians for what they wanted to exercise and where the Russians were unwilling to exercise and preserving some of that capability that they would not share. I think a lot of that, particularly in the political signaling space is gone now where the Russians or the Chinese such that I don’t know that there’s much that’s off the table anymore,” he said.

While Henderschedt said he cannot predict the future, he is comfortable saying both countries are in a different position and Russia is incurring debts to China “that will be very difficult, if not impossible to pay off in the near term. And I don’t mean, necessarily monetary debt so much as policy debts, of areas of exercise, areas of potentially technological exchange, training exchange, where I think that that’s where the real question lies.”