The problem has come into sharp relief only in the last few years as Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to a prolonged war that has drained U.S. “The most common thread in these exercises is that the United States needs to take steps now in the Indo-Pacific to ensure the conflict doesn’t happen in the future. And the impact of that on our society is quite devastating,” said Becca Wasser, who played the role of the Chinese leadership in the Select Committee’s wargame and is head of the gaming lab at the Center for a New American Security.

“The thing we see across all the wargames is that there are major losses on all sides.

“They knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it.”Īnd that’s assuming the U.S.-China war doesn’t go nuclear. The Chinese “just ran rings around us,” said former Joint Chiefs Vice Chair Gen. was much slower to rebuild, taking years to replace ships as it reckoned with how shriveled its industrial base had become compared to China’s. And as a protracted siege ensued, the U.S. The United States and its main ally, Japan, lost thousands of servicemembers, dozens of ships, and hundreds of aircraft. managed to even the odds for a time by deploying more sophisticated submarines as well as B-21 and B-2 stealth bombers to get inside China’s air defense zones, but Washington ran out of key munitions in a matter of days and saw its network access severed. and allied air bases and ships in the Indo-Pacific. Having taken seriously President Joe Biden’s pledge to defend the island, Beijing also struck pre-emptively at U.S. The war began in the early morning hours with a massive bombardment - China’s version of “shock and awe.” Chinese planes and rockets swiftly destroyed most of Taiwan’s navy and air force as the People’s Liberation army and navy mounted a massive amphibious assault across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait.

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