PLA opens door to invite civil firms in defense-tech R&D  

中国军方降低国防采购门槛 列需求单向民企招商

总参谋部日前发布一份军事需求单，列有108项具体条目，公开招徕地方优势资源参与部队训练领域先进技术和产品研发。分析认为，这意味军队打破训练保障行业垄断，降低国防采购领域门槛。 [查看全文]

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has released 108 procurements to the public, soliciting civil enterprises with research and develop (R&D) superiorities to participate in the R&D of advanced technologies and products in the military training field.

The General Staff Headquarters (GSH) of the PLA issued the procurement plan at the first exhibition of military training facility and advanced technology concluded on November 22, 2014.

The 108 procurements include not only equipment, such as the battle injury dummy, early warning aircraft, and aircraft carrier training simulator, but also cutting-edge technologies, such as short-distance wireless location, mass data processing, and cloud simulating computing.

"The public procurements of 108 defense-purpose products is unprecedented in the history of development of the PLA, which will definitely be conducive to raising the effectiveness of military expenditures, optimizing military resource allocation, and boosting national defense modernization," a leading officer of the Military Training Department under the GSH told the PLA Daily.

The GSH has built a general framework for the military training equipment system and a system of key technologies covering equipment simulation, commanding operation, actual-troop combat, aiming target and target missile, air platform, and battlefield simulation.

The GSH has also established a development guideline of the two systems, according to sources.

Taking this exhibition as an opportunity, the PLA and civil enterprises will make joint efforts to study the feasibility of establishing the market access and classification review system, so as to substantially lower the "threshold", break the trade monopoly, and create a fair and orderly procurement competition mechanism.

Meanwhile, military and defense–related procurements will be released on the national military-civil integration public service platform at regular intervals.

A total of 347 projects from military and civil manufactures appeared in the exhibition with 75 percent of the projects contributed by civil manufactures, a sign of civil enterprises' strength and their willingness to "join the army".

As of the press time, 117 companies of both military and civil industries have submitted their letters of cooperative intentions, covering 106 out of the 108 procurement items.