US prepares for long war with China that might hit its bases, homeland: Peter Apps

Reuters

19-05-2025

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) - Earlier this month, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Doug Wickert summoned nearby civic leaders to Edwards Air Force Base in California to warn them that if China attacks Taiwan in the coming years, they should be prepared for their immediate region to suffer potentially massive disruption from the very start.
In a remarkable briefing shared by the base on social media and promoted in a press release, Wickert - one of America's most experienced test pilots now commanding the 412th Test Wing - outlined China's rapid military growth and preparations to fight a major war.
Cutting-edge U.S. aircraft manufactured in California's nearby 'Aerospace Valley', particularly the B-21 'Raider' now replacing the 1990s B-2 stealth bomber, were key to keeping Beijing deterred, he said. However, if deterrence failed that meant China's would likely strike the U.S. including nearby Northrop Grumman factories where those planes were built.
"If this war happens, it's going to happen here," Wickert told them, suggesting attacks could include a cyber offensive that included long-term disruption to power supplies and other national infrastructure. "It's going to come to us. That is why we are having this conversation... The more ready we are, the more likely to change Chairman Xi's calculus."
Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly briefed that they believe Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, although they say no direct decision appears to have been made yet to order that attack.
As Washington and Beijing square up for that potential fight, their military preparations - now taking place on an industrial scale on both sides in a manner not seen in decades - are themselves becoming a form of posturing and messaging.
Chinese officials deny they are working on a tight specific timeline. However, Beijing has become increasingly assertive in its sovereignty claims over the island where Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek set up his government in exile after losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Ever since the 1979 U.S. recognition of the China's communist government as the country's legitimate rulers, successive administrations have maintained "strategic ambiguity" over whether they would intervene if democratically governed Taiwan was attacked. The Taiwan Relations Act passed the same year, however, commits the U.S. military to having updated plans to prevent any effort from Beijing to change the status quo.
While President Donald Trump has said he will never make a solid commitment one way or another – unlike predecessor Joe Biden who had gone further than any recent president in pledging to fight for Taiwan if it was attacked – a recently leaked official strategy document described deterring a Chinese attack as the Pentagon's top priority.
That means ensuring the U.S. is both visibly and genuinely prepared for what might be a long and brutal fight. As one senior U.S. officer put it this columnist this month: 'If China attacks Taiwan and we decide to intervene, that is not a war that is likely to be over quickly."
Such a conflict would likely see both casualties and destruction on a scale that would far outstrip anything in the "war on terror" conflicts that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Across the Philippines and western Pacific, U.S. military engineers are now rebuilding sometimes long-unused airstrips dating back to World War Two, intending to deploy small groups of aircraft to many places at once to maximise survivability.
Beijing has invested heavily in what are termed 'Anti-Access Area Denial' (A2AD) capabilities, mainly long-range missiles, with an intention of keeping U.S. warships - particularly aircraft carriers - out of its nearby waters. That would make U.S. aircraft flying from bases slightly further out even more important - but Beijing would likely hit those locations too.
Showing Beijing that the U.S. and its regional allies – principally Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia – have both the capacity and willpower to handle those attacks and keep on fighting is now growing part of U.S. messaging.
Images and video from military drills held in recent weeks on the Japanese island of Okinawa – part of the 'first island chain' that also includes Taiwan – showed U.S. Air Force combat engineers ready with bulldozers and construction equipment to immediately fix damaged runways and other essential systems.
This month, the Washington Times quoted a senior U.S. defence official saying that the U.S. territory of Guam would be a "major target of Chinese missile strikes" in the opening stages of any war around Taiwan.
The Pentagon has invested more than $7 billion of additional construction work on the territory, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth describing the 6,400 U.S. military personnel stationed there as "the tip of the spear" in the Indo Pacific.
"We're going to learn a lot (from the air defence systems on Guam) and apply them to defences on the continental United States," Hegseth told reporters and civic officials, adding that the U.S. would respond to an attack on Guam as it would for any other strike on its territory.
The new Trump administration has made building up missile defence for the continental United States – the so-called 'Golden Dome' system – a top priority, designed to intercept both conventional and nuclear long-range weaponry.
Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero welcomed Hegseth's comments, but expressed concern that the territory – which also provides support for other islands and independent territories – was ill-prepared for either major conflict or natural disaster, with its only hospital having less than thirty beds.
Some officials now believe those preparations should extend to being ready to handle the aftermath of one or more limited nuclear strikes from China or North Korea, which they now believe could be a feature of any coming war without wider escalation to a much larger exchange of atomic weapons devastating larger targets such as cities.
That was one of the findings of a recent series of wargames conducted by the Atlantic Council including current and former U.S. officials. The resulting report concluded that there was a growing risk that any Chinese attack against Taiwan might also be accompanied by North Korea moving against the South (or indeed that any war launched by North Korea might be taken by Beijing as an opportunity to move against Taiwan).
A report to Congress last July examining the risk of simultaneous conflict with Russia, China, North Korea and potentially Iran reached a similar conclusion, warning that the U.S. population was not sufficiently prepared for the disruptions in supplies and services such a conflict might produce, through cyber attacks and interruption of supply chains.
Keeping supplies coming would almost certainly a challenge for both sides. The U.S. Indo Pacific Command has talked repeatedly about using smaller and larger drones, including robot submarines, to create a 'Hellscape' in the Taiwan Strait to block Chinese forces.
Still, U.S. commanders acknowledge China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) now has its own hefty ability to target U.S. planes and ships, rendering it vital to forward locate equipment and weapons stocks early in advance – particularly as China's missile range improves.
This month, head of U.S. Indo Pacific command Admiral Sam Paparo said the 'depth and range' of China's military drills were now increasing fast, including exercises to invade and blockade Taiwan while also striking port and energy facilities.
Beijing is also publicly highlighting its ability to conduct such actions, presenting them as a key part of seizing the island. "If Taiwan loses its maritime supply lines, its domestic resources will quickly be depleted, social order will fall into chaos and people's livelihoods will be severely impacted," said a Chinese military official in one video released by the PLA.
"I remain confident in our deterrence posture, but the trajectory must change," Paparo told congressional officials in April, warning that while his forces currently retained enough superiority to deter a Taiwan invasion, that advantage was being rapidly eroded as China built up forces.
"There are gaps in defence fuelling support points," he said. "Those are the locations where aircraft and warships would load fuel and distribute fuel. There are shortfalls in our tanker fleet and keeping enough fuel in the case of a contingency. And there are gaps in the combat logistics force in order to sustain the force."
U.S. weapons stockpiles are also a growing worry, a concern made worse by months of strikes on Yemen believed to have further depleted stores of critical Tomahawk land attack missiles which the U.S. has been firing faster than it built for several years.
"God forbid, if we were in a short-term conflict, it would be short-term because we don't have enough munitions to sustain a long-term fight," said Republican Representative Tom Cole from Oklahoma, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, at a hearing earlier this week with acting U.S. Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby.
Kilby warned of further shortages of torpedoes and antiship missiles, saying the Pentagon needed to look at other manufacturers who might be able to produce weapons that were not quite as good but which were "more effective than no missile".
"If we go to war with China, it's going to be bloody and there's going to be casualties and it's going to take plenty of munitions," Kilby said. "So our stocks need to be full."