China fast on Ukraine lessons, slow on command reform

The Russia-Ukraine War has become a real-time laboratory for the Chinese military, spurring rapid defensive modernization while exposing deep friction between its centralized command hierarchy and the decentralized demands of modern combat.

This month, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a report detailing how China is aggressively leveraging the Russia-Ukraine war as a real-time testing ground to overhaul the People’s Liberation Army’s  (PLA) doctrine, procurement and force structure without engaging in direct conflict.

Analyzing more than 90 Chinese military and defense-industry publications from mid-2022 to mid-2026, the study shows that Chinese defense institutes identify emerging frontline tactics in an average of four months, then translate them into specialized hardware and training within a year.

Viewing the conflict primarily from the perspective of a defender, China is prioritizing countermeasures against Ukrainian-style sea drone ambushes and deep airfield raids—perceived as precursors to potential attacks against Chinese facilities.

Consequently, the PLA has accelerated deployments of interceptor drones, directed-energy weapons, and jamming suites, while also copying Russian reconnaissance-strike integration and fiber-optic first-person-view drones immune to electronic warfare.

To support mass uncrewed warfare, China restructured its military academies in 2025 to train specialized drone commanders and leaned heavily on its dominant commercial manufacturing base for components.

However, the study notes that the PLA’s rigid, centralized command structure still struggles to emulate the frontline tactical improvisation that battlefield forces achieve under live combat pressure.

This operational gap becomes acute when examining why China chose a defender’s perspective in the maritime theater. In the Black Sea, Ukraine transformed naval warfare by using explosive, low-profile sea drones and unmanned minelayers alongside anti-ship missiles to dismantle Russia’s naval dominance systematically.

These asymmetric strikes damaged or sank numerous warships, forced Russia to withdraw core vessels from Sevastopol to distant ports like Novorossiysk, and reopened grain export routes from Odesa.

In a conflict over Taiwan, US and allied forces could employ sea drones to wage low-cost asymmetric campaigns against China’s naval vessels and amphibious transports. Drawing on Ukrainian wartime tactics, sea drones such as Taiwan’s Endeavor Manta could provide affordable denial in the Taiwan Strait, while mothership-launched sea drones expand reach into contested waters.

By generating constant tactical friction and uncertainty, sea drone swarms would restrict China’s naval maneuver and render amphibious landings prohibitively risky.

Furthermore, Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb saw operatives infiltrate deep inside Russia to launch over 100 first-person-view drones from civilian trucks, striking strategic bomber bases and damaging or destroying dozens of irreplaceable Soviet-era aircraft.

For PLA observers, the attack shows how low-cost, expendable uncrewed systems can bypass conventional layered air defenses to inflict disproportionate strategic damage.

It underscores that sovereign rear bases are no longer sanctuary zones, forcing defense planners worldwide to mandate hardened aircraft shelters, tighter physical perimeter security, and counter-drone electronic warfare suites.

Despite a January 2025 Hudson Institute report stating that China has extensively fortified its airfields since the 2010s, doubling hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) to over 800 and building 2,300 unhardened shelters—enough to protect the vast majority of its combat aircraft—China’s forward airfields in the South China Sea may still be vulnerable to such an attack.

Specifically, China’s forward island airfields in the South China Sea sit beyond the immediate umbrella of mainland fighter sweeps and surface-to-air coverage.

Because these artificial features lack strategic depth and natural cover against saturation drone and missile raids, local garrisons must rely on lighter steel hangars rather than subterranean mountain bunkers. With limited apron space, combat aircraft must park intermittently in the open, creating prime opportunities for deep-strike asymmetric saturation.

Beyond adapting Russia’s use of fiber optic drones and its reconnaissance-strike complex, China may also be looking at Russia’s specialized drone units, notably the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies.

In an April 2026 report, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted that PLA Daily commentaries highlight Rubicon’s success as a model for structural reform, praising its centralized control, battlefield successes in Kursk, and rapid feedback loops between frontline operators and developers.

The ISW also notes that Chinese sources stress the creation of dedicated unmanned warfare units as an inevitable trend in modern warfare, adding that the PLA is considering creating similar units. However, it also notes that China’s politicized military, centralized command structure, and risk-averse leadership may hinder the bottom-up initiative that originally made Rubicon successful.

Given the tension between China’s political imperatives for centralized command and battlefield initiative, it is actively debating whether to adopt a version of the Western mission command concept, which emphasizes initiative at lower levels of command.

An October 2025 RAND report emphasizes that the central issue in this debate is how the PLA would adopt the mission command concept to survive future “intelligentized” warfare, in which rapid, data-intensive operations outpace centralized command capabilities.

The RAND report says that proponents argue that delegating authority to frontline units preserves operational speed, flexibility, and communication resilience while maintaining political control through commander’s intent.

However, it points out that systemic obstacles hinder broad adoption: Chinese Communist Party (CCP) orthodoxy prioritizes absolute control, leadership doubts officer competence, and institutions favor AI or skip-echelon networks to retain central oversight.

Furthermore, Milan Vego points out in a May 2025 Proceedings article that the mission command concept cannot easily be transplanted from one military to another without uprooting it from its deeper philosophical and cultural context.

Vego underscores that mission command rests on socio-political concepts of the German Enlightenment, which cultivate “thinking obedience”—a culture where officers are morally obligated to deviate from original orders when fast-shifting realities demand independent initiative to achieve the commander’s broader intent.

He stresses that such philosophy demands a highly educated and well-trained officer corps, deep trust between higher command and subordinates, and rejection of micromanagement and a “zero-failure” mentality – pointing out that other military cultures struggle to accommodate or trust authorized disobedience.

Consequently, the RAND report says that China’s implementation of mission command will likely remain stunted and uneven, with strategic forces staying strictly centralized while selected naval and special units experiment with delegation.

As China balances rapid technological absorption with institutional hesitation, the PLA is more likely to field an uneven hybrid force—combining cutting-edge counter-drone networks with pockets of local tactical initiative, while remaining vulnerable to decision-making latency whenever operations scale beyond pre-scripted plans.