The Victory Logic of Short-Cycle Rapid Strikes Represents a Major Expansion in the Application of Classical Operational Principles

短促循环打击的制胜逻辑，实现了对经典作战原则运用的重大拓展

PLA Daily (解放军报) 23 August 2026

Summary

Wang Jie and Yang Feilong, writing in what appears to be a PLA academic or doctrinal outlet, lay out the theoretical framework for 短周期快速打击 (short-cycle rapid striking), a fire-strike concept centered on high-frequency, precisely timed strikes designed to collapse an adversary's operational system through temporal disruption and entropy accumulation rather than physical attrition. The article documents the PLA's ongoing effort to reframe classical concentration-of-force principles for intelligentized warfare conditions, specifically the problem of how distributed forces can generate decisive effectiveness without massing in ways that invite detection and destruction. The framing points to a doctrinal preference for system-level paralysis over node destruction—consistent with broader PLA writing on 体系对抗 (system-of-systems confrontation)—though the article is theoretical; it does not identify specific units, platforms, or exercises that would indicate operational implementation.

The article articulates a named operational concept—'short-cycle rapid strikes' (短周期快速打击)—with explicit theoretical framing around temporal entropy injection, existence-release decoupling, and negative-entropy suppression, signaling a doctrinal effort to systematize intelligentized strike theory in ways that would interest analysts tracking PLA operational concept development for Taiwan or other contingencies.

Translation

The Victory Logic of Short-Cycle Rapid Strikes ■ Wang Jie, Yang Feilong

● Short-cycle rapid striking is a new type of strike tactic whose core is the dismantling of the enemy's operational system within a short period of time through rapid, high-frequency, and precise periodic fire strikes. Its victory logic is expressed across three dimensions—time, force, and system—and represents a major expansion in the application of classical operational principles.

As the form of intelligentized warfare (智能化战争) accelerates its evolution, the center of gravity of operational confrontation is extending from physical-domain entity destruction toward effectiveness manipulation at the level of system operation. Short-cycle rapid striking aims to dismantle the enemy's operational system within a short period of time through rapid, high-frequency, and precise periodic fire strikes. This is not a mere optimization of tactical process; rather, enabled by intelligentized technology, it is a conceptual revolution that drives the focal point of confrontation to leap from "entity destruction" to "system manipulation." Its victory logic is expressed across three dimensions—time, force, and system—and represents a major expansion in the application of classical operational principles.

The Time Dimension: From Speed Competition to Rule Definition—Deconstructing the Operational Closed Loop by Injecting Temporal Entropy (时间熵). Traditional time confrontation revolves around the OODA loop in an efficiency competition, which is in essence a speed contest under a shared set of temporal rules. The breakthrough of short-cycle rapid striking lies in transforming time from an operational resource shared by both sides into an operational instrument whose effects can be imposed unilaterally, thereby actively seizing the right to define the battlefield's temporal rules. By autonomously setting the duration, frequency, and initiation timing of the "strike—interval" cycle, each round of strikes is made to embed precisely into the critical phase of the enemy's defensive response, continuously interrupting the enemy's operational cycle and compelling it to repeatedly reset its processes and abort its deployments. The deep mechanism is the continuous injection of temporal entropy into the enemy's operational system, progressively fragmenting and disordering the enemy's temporal framework so that it is never able to complete a single full autonomous operational cycle, with computing power, manpower, and resources consumed en masse in endless emergency responses. As the saying goes, "If the enemy is at ease, tire him; if he is settled, move him (敌佚能劳之，安能动之)"—what is ultimately produced is not a speed differential of "we are fast, the enemy is slow," but a structural differential of "we have a stable rhythm, the enemy has no effective time," thereby winning battlefield initiative.

The Force Dimension: From Spatial Concentration to Temporal Energy Accumulation—Breaking the Concentration-Survival Paradox Through "Separation of Existence and Release (存释分离)." The essence of concentrating forces lies in generating instantaneous effectiveness overload at decisive spatiotemporal nodes. Mechanized warfare relied on spatial force concentration to achieve effectiveness stacking, yet could never escape the battlefield paradox of "concentrate and be exposed, disperse and be weakened." Short-cycle rapid striking, relying on intelligentized all-domain networking and millisecond-level cross-domain coordination capabilities, achieves the decoupling and separation of the force's "existence state (存在态)" from its "release state (释放态)": under normal conditions, each operational unit is covertly configured in a distributed manner across all domains, reducing signal signatures through diffuse disposition (弥散化布势) and eliminating from the root the survival risk posed by force concentration; when a decisive strike window opens, cross-domain fire, electromagnetic, cyber, and other operational effects instantaneously converge on the target point, generating effectiveness overload within an extremely narrow time window, and immediately dispersing and returning to concealment once the operational objective is achieved. Supplemented by the dynamic adaptation of modular elastic groupings (模块化弹性编组), its force employment has no fixed positions and no fixed routines, substituting precise temporal synchronization for physical spatial proximity, and dynamic instantaneous superiority for static scale superiority. This is both an essential return to the core substance of the principle of mass and an innovation in the paradigm of force employment under intelligentized conditions.

The System Dimension: From Node Attrition to Order Dissipation—Generating Endogenous System Failure Through Negative-Entropy Suppression (负熵压制). Traditional system disruption follows the linear logic of "node destruction → structural paralysis." Faced with intelligentized operational systems that are highly redundant, strongly self-repairing, and capable of self-organizing to fill gaps, single-point entity damage is easily offset by backup links. Short-cycle rapid striking breaks out of the entity-damage paradigm and strikes directly at the dissipative-system nature of the operational system: the orderly operation of any operational system depends on a continuous input of negative entropy (负熵), encompassing supply, repair, command and dispatch, and link calibration, among other elements; once the system's entropy-increase rate continuously exceeds the rate of negative-entropy supply, the system will spontaneously move toward chaotic collapse. Its disruption mechanism operates at two levels: first, continuously driving up the system's entropy-increase rate through high-frequency cyclic shocks, incessantly generating link fluctuations and operational disorder; second, by compressing interval windows, obscuring situational awareness, and disrupting repair sequencing, precisely blocking the channels and rhythm of the enemy's negative-entropy input, so that the rate of accumulated system damage always exceeds the rate of self-organizing recovery. When damage breaches the system's self-repair threshold, chaos will propagate from local links to the overall architecture, triggering systemic disorder in which nodes remain intact but connections are scrambled, timing collapses, and coordination fails—achieving the higher-order disruption of "not destroying its form but disordering its sequence (不毁其形而乱其序)."

In sum, the victory logic of short-cycle rapid striking lies in controlling temporal rules to dominate the course of confrontation, restructuring force employment to break the survival-effectiveness paradox, and dismantling system order to catalyze endogenous collapse. The three are interlocked and operate as an integrated whole, profoundly practicing the war-winning principle of "imposing conditions on the enemy rather than being imposed upon (致人而不致于人)." In the future, as AI target allocation, hypersonic weapons, drone swarms, and other capabilities are deeply integrated, this tactic will evolve toward a faster tempo, higher intelligence, and lower cost. This logic is a creative development and essential expansion of classical operational principles under new-era conditions, and provides theoretical support with deeper foundational penetrating power for offensive operations in intelligentized warfare.

Original Chinese

短促循环打击的制胜逻辑 ■王婕杨飞龙 ●短促循环打击是一种新型打击战术，核心是通过快速、高频、精准的周期性火力打击，在短时间内瓦解敌方作战体系。其制胜逻辑体现在时间、力量、体系三个维度，实现了对经典作战原则运用的重大拓展智能化战争形态加速演进，作战对抗重心正从物理域实体摧毁向系统运行层面的效能操控延伸。短促循环打击就是要通过快速、高频、精准的周期性火力打击，在短时间内瓦解敌方作战体系。这并非单纯的战术流程优化，而是在智能化技术赋能下，推动对抗焦点从“实体摧毁”向“系统操控”跃升的理念革新，其制胜逻辑体现在时间、力量、体系三个维度，实现了对经典作战原则运用的重大拓展。时间维度：从速度竞赛到规则定义，以时间熵注入解构作战闭环。传统时间对抗围绕OODA循环展开效率比拼，本质是同一时间规则下的速度竞争。短促循环打击的突破，在于将时间从双方共用的作战资源，转化为可单方面施加效果的作战手段，主动夺取战场时间规则的定义权。通过自主设定“突击—间歇”周期的长短、频率与发起时机，使每轮打击精准嵌入敌方防御响应的关键相位，持续打断敌方作战循环，迫使其不断重置流程、中止部署。其深层机理是持续向敌方作战系统注入时间熵，推动敌方时间体系逐步碎片化、无序化，使其始终无法走完一个完整的自主作战周期，算力、兵力与资源大量消耗在无休止的应急响应之中。正所谓“敌佚能劳之，安能动之”，最终形成的不是“我快敌慢”的速度差，而是“我有稳定节奏、敌无有效时间”的结构差，从而赢得战场主动权。力量维度：从空间聚集到时间聚能，以“存释分离”破解集中与生存悖论。集中兵力的本质在于决定性时空节点形成效能瞬时过载。机械化战争依托空间兵力集结实现效能叠加，却始终难以摆脱“集中则暴露、分散则弱效”的战场悖论。短促循环打击依托智能化全域组网与毫秒级跨域协同能力，实现力量“存在态”与“释放态”的解耦分离：常态下各作战单元全域分布式隐蔽配置，通过弥散化布势降低信号特征，从根源上消解兵力集中带来的生存风险；当决定性打击窗口出现，跨域火力、电磁、网络等作战效能向目标点瞬时聚合，在极窄时间窗口内形成效能过载，达成作战目的后即刻分散归位、恢复隐蔽状态。辅以模块化弹性编组的动态适配，其力量运用无固定阵位、无固化套路，以时间精准同步替代空间物理靠拢，以动态瞬时优势替代静态规模优势。这既是对集中兵力核心内涵的本质回归，更是智能化条件下力量运用范式的创新。体系维度：从节点毁伤到秩序耗散，以负熵压制催生体系内生失能。传统体系破击遵循“节点摧毁—结构瘫痪”的线性逻辑，面对高冗余、强自修复、具备自组织补位能力的智能化作战体系，单点实体毁伤极易被备份链路抵消。短促循环打击跳出实体毁伤定式，直击作战体系的耗散系统本质：任何作战体系的有序运行，都依赖持续的负熵输入，涵盖补给、修复、指挥调度、链路校准等环节，一旦体系熵增速率持续超过负熵补给速率，系统将自发走向混乱崩溃。其破击机理体现在两个层面：一是以高频次循环冲击持续推高体系熵增速率，不断制造链路波动与运行紊乱；二是通过压缩间歇窗口、模糊态势感知、打乱修复时序，精准阻滞敌方负熵输入的通道与节奏，使体系损伤累积速率始终高于自组织恢复速率。当损伤突破体系自修复临界值，混乱将从局部链路传导至整体架构，引发节点尚存但连接错乱、时序崩塌、协同失效的系统性失序，实现“不毁其形而乱其序”的高阶破击。总之，短促循环打击的制胜逻辑，在于掌控时间规则以主导对抗进程，重构力量运用以破解生存效能悖论，瓦解体系秩序以催生内生崩溃，三者环环相扣、一体联动，深刻践行了“致人而不致于人”的战争制胜法则。未来随着AI目标分配、高超音速武器、无人机集群等深度融入，该战术将向更快节奏、更高智能、更低成本方向演进。这一逻辑是对经典作战原则在新时代条件下的创造性发展和本质性拓展，为智能化战争进攻作战提供了更具底层穿透力的理论支撑。