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China's New Strategic Support Force: Its Missions, Organization, and Implications

• A major part of China's reform of its military was the creation in 2015 of the SSF, a new organization designed to better integrate space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities into PLA operations.
• The SSF appears to be a unique organization tasked with the inherently joint mission of supporting all services with its space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities.
• The SSF's C4ISR capabilities enable the PLA to effectively conduct joint operations and successfully prosecute "system vs. system" warfare, which it characterizes as essential to winning modern wars.
• The SSF appears to be charged with launching and operating China's satellite architecture, carrying out the co-orbital counterspace mission involving satellite-on-satellite attacks, and perhaps other counterspace missions.
• Creation of the SSF made one organization responsible for the development of the PLA's space and information warfare forces to better integrate their capabilities into a joint force.
• Information warfare, including space warfare, long identified by PLA analysts as a critical element of warfare, appears to have entered a period of significant development that could critically affect U.S. military operations.