PLA Participates in Russia's Central-2026 Exercise: 600 Drones Behind a New Armored Assault Topic

From September 28 to October 3, the Russian "Central-2026" strategic exercise took place. What is truly worth analyzing is not how many personnel the PLA deployed, but what it practiced during the exercise. A joint assessment by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War on October 6 stated that the PLA's Central Theater Command sent an undisclosed number of troops to participate in three-dimensional reconnaissance, fire strikes, obstacle breaching, and multi-directional assaults. The Russian side claimed that the exercise utilized over 600 drones and 60 unmanned ground vehicles.

These figures cannot be directly equated to the scale of the PLA's equipment, but they indicate that future armored assaults are no longer about tanks and infantry fighting vehicles advancing in formation. Drones are responsible for target detection, fire correction, and damage assessment, unmanned ground vehicles enter high-risk areas, and manned armored vehicles advance using reconnaissance windows. In simple terms, armored forces are transforming from a "steel cluster" into a sensor network composed of manned and unmanned platforms.

What the PLA is Learning from Russia

A report by the South China Morning Post on October 9 focused on a very specific question: how the PLA absorbs the latest drone tactics from the Russia-Ukraine war. The Russian military showcased numerous scenarios of drones, unmanned vehicles, and manned equipment working in coordination during "Central-2026," which provides the PLA with a low-cost battlefield experiment. The PLA can observe whether drones can reliably communicate, navigate, and indicate targets in a complex electromagnetic environment, and can also test how armored units maintain formation and supply under continuous reconnaissance pressure.

However, there is an easily overlooked limitation here. The Russia-Ukraine battlefield has generated a wealth of experiences in positional warfare and disrupted infiltration, with small Russian assault teams, motorcycles, and all-terrain vehicles playing important roles in the exercise. For the PLA, simply copying these practices does not solve the core challenges of post-amphibious landings. What is needed in the Taiwan direction is to quickly establish a beachhead, expand the breach, and continue to advance deep before the opponent can restore command and anti-ship fire. Achieving local breakthroughs at the front line does not equate to maintaining high-speed maneuverability at the operational level.

What It Means for Taiwan Strait Operations

The Taiwan Strait environment will further amplify the issue of unmanned systems. The strait, beaches, and urban areas may cause communication obstructions, and Taiwan will also use inexpensive drones, distributed sensors, and mobile anti-armor weapons. If the PLA wants its armored forces to continue advancing after landing, it must ensure that drones are resupplied quickly enough, can operate after communication links are disrupted, and can relay reconnaissance results to artillery, air forces, and ground assault units within minutes.

On October 9, Taiwan reported that within 24 hours, it detected 2 PLA military aircraft, 5 naval vessels, and 2 civilian ships, deploying aircraft, ships, and shore-based missile systems for monitoring. This is not a battle, but it reflects that the PLA faces continuous surveillance and a multi-layered interception system around the Taiwan Strait. The PLA's trend of reducing some aerial activities while increasing the presence of naval and civilian vessels this year also reminds us that we cannot judge the level of pressure solely by the number of military aircraft sorties.

Numerical Advantage Must Pass Supply Chain Tests

The true threshold for unmanned systems is not just designing a drone that can fly, but whether it can mass-produce anti-jamming communication devices, infrared and synthetic aperture sensors, batteries, and data link terminals, and quickly replenish them after combat losses. The PLA has a complete electronic industry and a civilian drone supply chain, which is a clear advantage; however, the mass production of civilian products does not automatically equate to the reliability of military systems in high-interference and high-loss environments.

I believe that the most valuable outcome of Central-2026 for the PLA may not be learning a specific Russian military tactic, but rather verifying whether the "reconnaissance-strike-maneuver" closed loop can continue to operate in a high-density drone environment. In the future, what truly determines the combat effectiveness of armored forces may not be how many new tanks are added, but whether each battalion can maintain a stable system of unmanned reconnaissance, electronic countermeasures, and rapid repair.

References: Joint Assessment by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War, South China Morning Post report on the PLA absorbing Ukrainian drone tactics, Taiwan News citing the October 9 report from Taiwan's defense department.

The question is whether the PLA can transform the unmanned coordination observed in the exercise into a continuous capability that can withstand electromagnetic suppression, maritime losses, and logistical interruptions during landing operations. This answer has yet to appear in public data.