- Service ensign · official
- State affiliation · China
- Vigil category device · not official insignia
Identity provenance
Service ensign: Flag of the People’s Liberation Army — carried as a PLA component. AUTHORED TO PREVENT AN ANACHRONISM RATHER THAN TO CLAIM A SERVICE MARK. This record is the Second Artillery Corps, redesignated as the Rocket Force in 2015, and it sits under that successor in the tree; without its own identity it would inherit the Rocket Force ensign, which postdates it. What it carried, as every PLA component has since 1949, is the PLA flag — drawn by Vigil from its official construction. The Second Artillery's own service flag, if it had one distinct from the Rocket Force's, has not been established and none is claimed here.
State affiliation: China.
The smaller square mark is a Vigil category device, drawn from this record’s own domain, echelon and role — not an official insignia.
In brief
The PLA's missile branch from 1966 to 2015, and the organisation the Rocket Force was elevated from — a branch, not a service, for almost fifty years.
- Scope
- Structure, role, lineage and links. No subordinate records published.
- Subordination
- Historical subordination · until 2015-12
- Sources
- 4 on the record
- Record state
- Partial
- Broad area of activity
- Chinese territory
- Notable history
- Raised on 1 July 1966 and given a deliberately obscure name — "Second Artillery" said nothing about what it held — the corps was China's land-based nuclear and, later, conventional missile organisation for forty-nine years. Its standing was a branch rather than a service, which meant it did not sit at the same institutional level as the army, navy and air force. On 31 December 2015, in the same round of reforms that created the theatre commands and the Strategic Support Force, it was redesignated the PLA Rocket Force and raised to full service status. That elevation is the fact this record exists to carry: it is the clearest single indicator of where the PLA reforms placed missile forces in the hierarchy, and it is routinely used as such in published assessment.
- Strengths
- Not applicable to a superseded organisation; the record exists to date a change of institutional standing, not to assess a capability.
- Limitations
- Sources published before 2016 describe this organisation, not the Rocket Force, and the two are not interchangeable for claims about standing, subordination or remit. Vigil publishes no inventories, no bases, no deployments, no ranges and no employment concepts for either the historical branch or its successor.
Lineage & institutional history
Successors: PLA Rocket Force
A branch under the Central Military Commission with the standing of a service arm rather than a service, from its establishment in July 1966 until it was redesignated the PLA Rocket Force on 31 December 2015.
Assessed as of — 2026-09 Last reviewed — 2026-09-09
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