The PLA's 2025 Justice Mission: Scope and Limits
On Dec. 29, 2025, Xinhua News Agency reported that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command had begun Justice Mission 2025 around Taiwan. Beijing established seven no-fly and no-sail zones, rehearsed blockade- and invasion-related actions, pressured Penghu, and tested eastern approaches to Taiwan. Taiwan detected 210 PLA aircraft sorties and 48 naval vessels around the island, showing that the PLA could coordinate forces at scale.
But the PLA's anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) system is more than missiles, ships, and aircraft. It is a network that can find US, allied, and partner forces, identifies them, and level weapons against them. This smart network connects satellites, radars, aircraft, ships, command centers, communications systems, and weapons. It is a kill-web turns target information into coordinated action.
The United States often measures success through visible destruction: aircraft downed, radars struck, and command sites damaged. That model remains useful, but it is poorly matched to an adversary that depends on collecting, comparing, and moving information quickly. To win in the South Pacific, the United States need not destroy the PLA’s entire network. It merely needs to make a specific PLA decision late or doubtful long enough for a friendly force to act.
Ideally, a US disruption would begin by first identifying which PLA decision must be delayed, then working backwards to undermine the systems supporting said decision. The joint force should not plan on blinding the PLA theater system everywhere. It should build local decision-window packages that make specific PLA decisions late or unrecovered long enough for a friendly action to complete a mission. A decision window is a short period when the PLA lacks timely information needed to stop a friendly action.
Justice Mission 2025 also revealed the burden beneath the spectacle. A blockade or invasion requires the PLA to find and follow a target, combine sensor reports, and move the resulting picture and orders to a weapons unit before the target moves. The PLA may retain platforms and still lose tempo if those steps disagree or happen too late. To do this, the United States would need to undermine three PLA pillars.
Pillar One: Finding and Following Targets
The first pillar is the PLA's ability to observe, identify, and track activity. China's space architecture uses satellite imagery and electronic reconnaissance, which detects radar and radio emissions, to find movement, update target records, direct sensors, and narrow searches for mobile forces. These systems need current information to follow a target and support a decision before its location becomes too old to use.
The counter is not to blind the PLA across the theater, but to create uncertainty in one place for a limited time. Decoys, camouflage, disciplined radio and radar use, and movement timed against collection opportunities can force the PLA to separate real activity from plausible alternatives. All the United States needs to do is reduce confidence. Such advantages appear when the PLA must redirect a satellite, widen a search, or wait for confirmation while a friendly force acts.
Pillar Two: Combining Sensor Reports
To successfully target US assets, the PLA must combine several separate observations into one usable picture. Satellite imagery, electronic reconnaissance, radar tracks, reports from ships and aircraft, and other intelligence must all be collected into one vision. Analysts and automated systems must decide whether sensors are observing the same object, whether it was identified correctly, and whether its location is current enough to support action.
This process creates a shared battlefield picture but also offers space where doubt can be spread. Old imagery, conflicting radar or radio-emission data, delayed updates, deceptive signatures, and mismatched time stamps can force the PLA to second guess itself. Continuous target tracking means knowing what a target is, where it is, and whether that location remains current. A report may support surveillance yet be too old for a time-sensitive strike.
US and allied forces should make reports harder to reconcile when a specific PLA decision must be made. A decoy or time discrepancy may be dismissed alone. Together as a believable but inconsistent pattern, such distractions can force more checking, draw scarce sensors toward the wrong area, or direct weapons toward the wrong target. The best deception creates delay or doubt until the friendly action is complete.
Pillar Three: Moving Information and Orders
Even an accurate picture has little value if it cannot reach commanders and weapons units in time. Sensors send observations to command centers, which send target information to commanders. Commanders return priorities, permission to engage, and weapon assignments. Satellite communications and networks connect these steps across long distances. A report arriving after the target moves may be as useless as no report.
Actions against this part of the system seek to make a report or order arrive late, intermittently, or through a pathway commanders distrust. Rehearsed options can temporarily complicate communications, data routing, authorization messages, and backup command paths. These effects must be limited, reversible, legally authorized, and coordinated with allies. If permission to engage arrives after the target moves beyond reach, the network has failed even if its parts still exist.
Keeping Reports, Orders, and Weapons Synchronized
Every part of the network must agree on when an observation occurred, how old a target report is, and when the next action must happen. Accurate timing helps sensors compare reports, commanders judge whether a location remains current, and weapons operate in sequence. Small timing errors can make a report appear old, cause sensors to disagree, or disrupt safe weapons employment.
Localized disruption does not, however, make the PLA harmless. Fixed bases, ports, airfields, and known routes will still face preplanned fires. The greatest advantage appears against mobile targets, where minutes spent checking a report or waiting for an order can separate success from failure. The aim is not paralysis, but to reduce the PLA's ability to coordinate where and when friendly forces need freedom to act.
Putting the Approach into Practice
This approach does not require a new permanent organization. An existing combatant command could assign a small joint planning team to connect the desired result to the PLA systems that could prevent it. For each operation, the team would identify the decision to delay, determine which sensors, analysis centers, communications paths, and timing services support it, and coordinate limited actions against them. It would also establish legal limits, allied coordination, shutoff criteria, and conditions for changing the plan.
Success must be measured by PLA behavior, not simply whether a technical system was affected. Satellite redirection, wider searches, or extra collection may show uncertainty in finding a target. Conflicting reports or repeated identity checks may show difficulty combining information. Delayed orders, unusual confirmation traffic, or backup communications may show trouble moving information and authority. These signs tell a commander whether a useful period of advantage has emerged.
Conclusion
Attacking the PLA’s A2/AD from within via cyber and space warfare offers a better way of war. The United Sates need not destroy every missile battery, radar, airfield, and ship. Instead, the United States can degrade or confuse PLA decision-making. The objective should not be theater-wide collapse, which is unlikely to occur quickly or decisively. The United States and her allies only need to create windows to attack in which the PLA’s picture is sufficiently hazy to enable allied forces to maneuver, strike, and return to base.
Justice Mission 2025 showed a PLA increasingly capable of synchronized pressure around Taiwan. It also showed how much that pressure depends on space-enabled coherence. China has built a warfighting system around speed, precision, and control. The United State should not match capability for capability. It should target the assumptions that make the A2/AD function.
The measure of success should not be what burns, but what hesitates. If China’s space-enabled kill-web cannot trust what it sees, cannot fuse what it collects, and cannot relay decisions in time, then its firepower loses tempo. A network that cannot trust its own picture cannot fight with confidence. In a contest defined by information and speed, that hesitation can become deterrence.
Matt “Niner” Smokovitz is a USAFA/IFC Fellow and former USAF Weapons School instructor researching how EW and cyber can fracture China’s A2/AD kill web.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Space Force, Defense Department, or the US government.