The Humble Brag: China’s Recent Wargame and Its Implications

On 4 January 2025, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper published an article detailing how a Chinese-run ‘wargame’ had modelled the sinking of a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) destroyer by US missile attack. The missiles in question were the Lockheed Martin-made, US Navy/Air Force-employed AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM). Given that these missiles are specifically designed to sink ships from range, the fact that they did so in a simulation is hardly remarkable. That such a simulation should be run and documented in a peer-reviewed academic publication is possibly a little more surprising, given Chinese military sensitivity. What is noteworthy is that the institute which ran the simulation  is one that provides modelling and simulation tools for the PLA and is one of the institutes run by the China Electronics Technology Corporation (CETC), a powerful state-owned enterprise which has been involved with projects including China’s nuclear and satellite programmes. The decision of academics from the 15th Institute who presumably hold security clearances to provide interviews to a pro-Chinese government publication, a promoter of Chinese ‘soft power’ (the SCMP) would presumably have occurred with state encouragement or at a minimum approval. This raises the question of why seemingly negative results were published in an English-language newspaper which is accessible to foreign audiences. Moreover, what can be understood regarding the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) assessment of its own capabilities based on the outcome of the exercise? This article seeks to provide some plausible rationales for the PLA to publicise the seemingly disappointing results of this simulation.

The Technical Dimensions of the Exercise: A Humble Brag?

Based on what was reported regarding the exercise, the wargame simulated a large clash between the US and China. The article details a simulation set in the northeastern part of the South China Sea where the US attacks a Chinese battlegroup from the ‘nine-dash line’, Beijing’s declared limit of sovereignty in the South China Sea. The attack consists of 10 LRASM launched from different platforms, all targeting a PLAN destroyer. The simulation sees the PLA disable both radar guidance and GPS navigation by means of electronic warfare (EW). However, the ‘thermal imaging’ capability of the LRASM (its IR seeker) allows for a terminal navigation phase for accurate and successful targeting. 

While the result of the simulation would appear negative for the PLAN, several details are noteworthy. First, the claim that the PLAN’s Type-055 cruiser was able to disable the radar on the LRASM is of interest. The reason for this is that the LRASM does not use an active radar like many anti-ship missiles, but rather relies on a passive radar for wide area surveillance using emissions from enemy ships. The advantage of passive radar is that they are a relatively difficult target for directional jamming because the location of the receiver is difficult to ascertain, unlike active radar which must emit and can thus be detected. Implicit in the Chinese claim that the LRASM’s passive radar was disabled, then, is the suggestion that the PLAN vessel was deemed to have located the missile with sufficient accuracy to enable directional jamming, which would involve transmitting false signals into the passive radar’s aperture. The jamming of the missile’s onboard radar would thus suggest two things. First, the vessel was deemed to have a very accurate sense of the missile’s location despite the LRASM’s stealthy profile. Second, Chinese efforts to develop modes of jamming passive radar, into which the state has invested funding through its talent programmes, are deemed to have borne fruit. The methods of doing so might include emitting signals which produce an interference peak on a radar’s doppler map and thus create false tracks. The PLA’s claimed success here would, if true, have ramifications both for the survivability of missiles with a low radar cross-section (which the PLA is implicitly claiming the ability to track) and for US naval efforts at emissions control and the use of passive detection in the first island chain.

The second aspect of note is that the article claims that the LRASM’s GPS guidance was disabled 10 km from the Type-055. While the jamming of GPS-guided capabilities is not new and has been achieved by the Russians in Ukraine against JDAM, blocking signals from all of the GNSS satellites from which a missile or munition can receive signals requires jamming over a wide area, possibly requiring multiple overlapping EW systems in the case of the Russians in Ukraine. Additionally, since US munitions are programmed to not receive messages that are not in encrypted M-Code, successful jamming would imply the ability either to spoof signals in M-Code or to generate enough power that all signals are blocked. All of this would point to a robust Electronic Counter Measures suite on the Type-055 and any vessels supporting it in the simulation. 

Third, the paper talks only of the EW defences, and does not appear to consider the host of other ‘hard kill’, medium- and short-range options open to the PLA and PLAN. Additionally, the article references the fact that the radar coverage AWACS and fighter aircraft were not considered. As can be seen from the indignant response to the article on some Chinese message boards, many commentators have noted this omission. This could include the 1130 or 730 Close-in Weapon Systems (similar to NATO’s Goalkeeper or Phalanx) and ‘Hong Qi’ (red flag) family of vertical launch systems, short- and medium-range models such as the HHQ 9 and HHQ 16. Given that the LRASM is a stealth missile, the degree to which these Chinese systems would be effective remains unexamined in the article. 

However, as mentioned, the claim that the Chinese battlegroup had a good enough understanding of the missile’s location to enable jamming of passive radar is telling. A degree of knowledge sufficient to enable directional jamming of a passive receiver would also be sufficient to enable hard kill. An implicit message might, then, be that the Type-055 could have engaged the LRASM with its onboard missiles in their terminal phase, and perhaps at even greater distances with AWACS and fighter support. 

A PLA Active Measure to Undermine LRASM?

Relatedly, the claimed fidelity of the simulation is noteworthy. What is specifically alluded to is the flight profile of the missile and the assertion of a degree of ‘complex details’ captured in the simulation by the academic paper’s author. This may be further indication to its adversaries that the PLA knows more than perhaps the US would like them to about the missile specifications. As defence industry experts know, details of the flight profiles, link communications, navigation systems, ranges and missile speeds are generally classified, and this is certainly true for the LRASM as a state-of-the-art ‘stealth’ missile. That there are vertical launch variants for ships and that the LRASM has been adapted for multiple aircraft types is in the public domain, but specific details are not easy to come by. Officially released data or other promotional detail is deliberately vague, and official publications state that specifics have not been released for security reasons. It is, however, true that much can be gleaned from open source investigations, and it is not unheard of for classified details to appear on public forums; especially if the unwary are being specifically probed for such information. A classic example of such a disclosure was the well-publicised case of Challenger II tank specifications being released on a ‘War Thunder’ gaming forum in order to try to win an argument. It is possible that the simulation was modelled around best guesses and supposition, or that technical specifications were (as claimed) garnered from prolonged and diligent open-source research. 

However, as discussed, it is of note that the simulation was run by the North China Institute of Computing Technology (NCICT), the 15th Research Institute of CETC. As a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, it has been implicated on multiple occasions in cases of ‘export violations’ with certain US-based technology companies. The role of the 15th Institute and its parent organisation in the Chinese defence ecosystem would suggest that its researchers have access to classified data. Through its claims to be able to accurately model the LRASM’s flight profile and radar cross-section, the PLA would appear to be tacitly claiming to have either penetrated classified US systems or deduced highly classified data using available information. 

This does, however, raise questions regarding the veracity of the claims. If the PLA was truly confident in its success in accessing sensitive data, it would have strong incentives to keep this private to achieve surprise in a conflict rather than alerting the US to the compromise of critical systems. Perhaps the PLA deems the programmatic disruption to LRASM resulting from any inquest within the US that this revelation causes to be a worthwhile result, especially if the programme is too late in its development for vulnerabilities to be easily fixed. However, if disruption is the aim, it should be noted that a similar effect could be achieved through false claims as well. As a historical analogy, we might consider how the USSR attempted to strengthen the hands of critics of the Strategic Defence Initiative by leaking (often spurious) technical data that reinforced the idea that any missile shield could be easily penetrated. One interpretation, then, is that the PLA is trying to undermine a programme which causes it genuine concern.

The PLA Focus on Realistic Blue Forces

More broadly, the simulation likely tells us something about the modelling and simulation work conducted in support of the PLA, both in terms of the intelligence which supports it and the levels of realism being sought.

The nature of the simulation and in particular the absence of AWACS support and hard kill measures is of interest. This is, perhaps, explicable given the institute which conducted the modelling. The Beijing-based NCICT specialises in military model development and the development of major projects in aerospace measurement and control systems. The parent corporation of CETC also advertises itself as working in radar and EW-related technology. It is therefore unsurprising that the wargame appears to have limited itself to testing EW defensive measures. Industry wargaming, unlike defence ministry or military wargaming, works with different constraints and may have different or more focused aims. These can range from product design, development and testing to demonstrations and sales. It is perhaps in this light that the article should be viewed – as a declaration of capability in EW and a statement of competence to the West (and especially the US), but perhaps also an internal pitch that the NCICT has done its bit, and that it is for others to within the PLA and industry to move in by, for example, providing countermeasures against IR seekers (on which the LRASMs relied after their radar malfunctioned).

More broadly, the PLA is increasingly not a stranger to wargaming, and invests heavily in this and ‘opposing force training’, with ‘blue’ (or enemy) forces occasionally even going so far as to wear the uniforms of the forces they are representing. The emphasis on using models with high levels of fidelity and dedicated experts on adversary forces is considered by the PLA to be critical to meeting Xi Jinping’s demand for realistic training and ensuring the combat effectiveness of a force that has not seen combat since 1979. The danger of what the PLA calls the ‘peace disease’ is one that China’s leaders are acutely aware of.

Since Chinese leaders and planners seem aware that the PLA’s lack of combat experience is both a limitation and something which likely opponents may perceive as a weakness, advertising the fact that Chinese wargames are not just scripted exercises in which the PLA always wins might, then, be seen as a way of making the PLA more credible in the eyes of its opponents. The message may be that unlike, for example, the Russian military before Ukraine – which was plagued by the habit of subordinates painting excessively rosy pictures to their superiors – the PLA is a force which confronts its own deficiencies.

Moreover, the accompanying risk that the negative outcome leads an opponent to downrate its assessment of Chinese equipment is mitigated. Any potential adversary – in this case the US – will know that the limitations of the simulation as discussed in the SCMP article will be well understood by the PLA, and the findings of a military run wargame are unlikely to be so well publicised. In addition to the hard kill options and AWACS support mentioned above, the wider principles of anti-access/area denial would be at play, making any scenario as proposed in the simulation far more complex, multi-layered and multi-dimensional. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Chinese article was an interestingly stark acknowledgment that the US is the enemy, rather than using a nameless adversary with capabilities similar to the US that often features in exercise and wargames. Although framed as a ‘humble brag’ with the loss of a PLAN destroyer, the article clearly advertised a certain Chinese confidence in the inevitable arms race in which China and the US, as technological world leaders, are engaged. The (possible) NCICT sales pitch hints at a certain level of knowledge and understanding, and leaves much unsaid for the US to consider as it continues in the development of increasingly complex, stealthy and long-range anti-ship missiles. It is therefore an article of interest to many ‘defence watchers’, but manages to deliver some very specific messages. 

© RUSI, 2025

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