China's looming Expeditionary Airborne Forces.

Do you remember the Chinese Heavy Transport Airplane that they've recently started testing?

I do.

I hope you did more than me and simply dismiss it as another example of the Chinese copying more plans from foreign governments and building weapon systems.

I hope you put it together in a way that I didn't and realize that this seems to be part of a greater strategy.

Its really quite obvious when you step back.

I've called for the US Army to forward deploy a Battalion or two of its 82nd Airborne to the Pacific to act as rapid deployment forces to be used in conjunction with Marine Forces.  I'm not as enthused about Stryker Brigades in an air transported role but the US Army had that as a requirement when the vehicles were first developed/delivered.

But what happens if your doctrine is pure?  What if you didn't suffer a decade plus of IED warfare?  What happens if your vehicles are in the 15-25 ton class and air transportable.

What if your wheeled vehicle is something like this...

ZBD-09.  The Chinese Stryker...20 tons lighter than the Double V-Hull US Army Stryker.

We've all been pumped up by the tech coming to the Chinese Air Force and Navy but have missed the improvements at a more basic level.

They're putting together the parts to have a truly expeditionary, air transportable, mechanized infantry unit that will augment several airborne divisions already in service.

What does this mean for our defense posture?

We could be looking at Chinese naval activity as a clue to their intentions and miss aerial transports operating inland that suddenly sortie out to land an air mech/airborne infantry force on a strategically or politically important island.

I could be wrong, but if you put the new air transport together with vehicles that appear to geared more toward pure expeditionary operations rather than stabilization or extended ground combat then I think my guesses might be spot on.