Latest news with #DougWickert
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How America is losing its military supremacy to China
When one of Pakistan's Chinese-made fighter jets fired a missile over the Kashmiri mountains and shot down one of India's French-built Rafale fighters, Western officials took note. It marked the first time the West had seen the Chinese JC-10 aircraft and PL-15 missiles be deployed in active combat. Western officials have since pored over the details of this clash, asking what this means about China's military capabilities and whether Xi Jinping's nation has finally caught up with the West. Over the past 25 years, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has exploded from a small military that had to generate its own revenue by growing crops to one of the largest and most powerful in the world. 'China is the strongest it's ever been,' said Brigadier General Doug Wickert, the 412th Test Wing commander in the United States air force. 'It has fairly aggressively built a very large force that's been specifically developed to counter our strengths.' Today, the PLA boasts almost a million more troops than the United States and over a thousand more tanks. It has built its navy into the largest in the world with approximately 400 warships and stacked its air force with nearly 2,000 fighter jets. Beijing has also drastically expanded its intelligence capabilities to the point where deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis claimed earlier this week that China has become an 'existential threat to American security in a way we really have never confronted before'. However, while China is stronger today than it has been previously, a look into its actual capabilities show that the PLA still lags in skill and experience and has a tendency to fall one step behind its more seasoned competitor. 'The numbers don't tell the whole story,' noted Gen Wickert. 'China's military has grown in numbers as well as sophistication, but there are still some areas where we have technological advantage.' Every year, a wide array of expos and shows are held across China, which show off the arsenal of one of the most opaque and secretive armed forces in the world. In November, China hosted its annual Zhuhai Air Show where it showcased the J-20 stealth fighter jets, seen as direct competitors to one of the US' strongest fighters, the F-35 Lightning II, and capable of carrying air-to-air missiles like the PL-15s used by Pakistan against India. The HQ-19 anti-ballistic missile system was also on display, as was the new SS-UAV 'Jiu Tan' drone carrier, capable of releasing swarms of Kamikaze attack drones at once, which will set sail on its maiden voyage next month. More recently at the World Radar Expo last week, China trumpeted a new JY-27V radar, which state media claims can detect American fifth-generation stealth fighters, including the F-35 Lightning II. China's navy is also rumoured to be developing a new supercarrier, similar to the USS Gerald Ford, which would be larger than any existing vessel in its fleet. And the army is said to be developing a new 4th generation light tank, which would host cannons capable of firing multiple ammunition types. However, most worrying to the US is Beijing's rapid advancement of its nuclear capabilities. From 2023 to 2024, it added 100 more warheads to its arsenal, rising from 500 to 600, and the country is expected to have more than 1,000 by 2030. According to experts, at least 400 of these are intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the US from the Chinese mainland, including the DF-41, which can travel between 12,000 to 15,000 kilometres. While the US, with 3,700 warheads in its arsenal, continues to hold an advantage, the American government has expressed concern over Beijing's rapid speed. During a senate address in April, US Senator Roger Wicker noted that China's nuclear expansion is now 'at a pace that far outstrips our own'. Timothy Heath, a senior defence researcher and China expert at RAND Corp, explained that Beijing's nuclear progress is likely part of its 'deterrence posture'. 'It's a sign that they don't want to get into a conventional fight with the US,' said Mr Heath. 'Having a nuclear inventory is a way to warn the US not to start a fight.' Beyond its nuclear inventory, there are areas where Chinese advancements are rivalling the US. According to Mr Heath, hypersonic missiles could be one domain in which the PLA has 'surpassed the US in technology'. He also noted that Beijing has become a 'world player in the world market' for military drones, though other experts like Gen Wickert don't agree that there is yet any technology 'where China is ahead'. The PLA's developments have been particularly concerning in the context of a potential conflict over Taiwan – the only possible scenario in which the US and Chinese armies could face one another. Credit: PLA Eastern Theatre Command Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, which the government in Taipei rejects, and has threatened to invade the island on numerous occasions. As a key arms supplier to Taiwan, former US president Joe Biden had said that the US would come to the country's defence, but Donald Trump has refused to offer a clear position on the issue. Mr Heath explains that China's proximity to Taiwan gives it an advantage because Beijing would have immediate access to 'all ground-based systems'. Meanwhile, the US would have 'to project power from an ocean away'. At the senate address in April, Mr Wicker noted that China is now 'capable of denying US air superiority in the first island chain,' referring to the string of islands in the Pacific, which include parts of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo. This means that China's surface-to-air missiles are now capable of shooting down any US aircraft in the event of a war. Washington has also sounded the alarm over China's cyberwarfare capabilities. In a recent speech at a university in California, Gen Wickert said China had managed to infiltrate the US's electrical grid and plant malware on SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, which monitor critical infrastructure like electricity, water and gas distribution. 'China has gained access to those systems and mapped them, and that is certainly concerning. It's considered an act of war,' Gen Wickert told The Telegraph. The PLA was not always such a fierce competitor. In the 1990s, when Western countries were investing trillions of pounds into their armies, the PLA didn't even have enough money to sustain itself. 'It had a very small budget from the government and was essentially dependent on money-making activities to fund itself,' said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the former Director for China at the US Department of Defence. 'This meant the PLA was investing in factories and services and logistics businesses and in rural areas they would even grow their own food.' While it has come a long way in the decades since, the PLA continues to face significant challenges, which experts say have stopped it from reaching parity with the US. For one, the US military is tried and tested on the battlefield, having fought in several conflicts around the world from Iraq to Afghanistan, while the PLA has not fought a war in decades. China's armed forces also struggle with integration. While the US military is a fully joint force, meaning the different services – from the air force to the navy – work closely together, the PLA remains disjointed. Kitsch Liao, the associate director of the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, noted that the PLA's readiness levels, which measure preparedness for active combat, are also lower than the US's. 'If the US wants to bomb one site, they can assign one aircraft. They don't need another aircraft on standby in case the jet breaks down. The US used to do this in the 1960s and China still has to do that,' said Mr Liao. The US's air force readiness for the last year was just over 60 per cent, which is 'relatively poor', according to Mr Liao, but China's score, which is not made public, is believed to be even lower. China's defence limitations stem in part from the PLA's inherent structure as an extension of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Unlike militaries in the US or the UK, which are separate from any political entity, the PLA was established to serve the communist party and its primary objective today is to keep the party in power. Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, explained that it would be equivalent to if in the US 'the Republicans had their own army and the Democrats had their own army'. Given the PLA's role in the party, it often focuses its development on political issues rather than security concerns, as evidenced by its fixation on Taiwan, which does not pose any immediate threat to China. The PLA is also hampered by its tendency to imitate rather than innovate. Rather than developing its own cutting-edge hardware, China relies on following closely behind its American counterparts, which makes it very difficult to match or overtake the US. 'They're always one step behind because their methodology for catching up has been technology theft and acquisition,' said Mr Thompson. 'China has always benchmarked itself on other forces and ironically that means that in many cases it can't actually catch up.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
How America is losing its military supremacy to China
When one of Pakistan's Chinese-made fighter jets fired a missile over the Kashmiri mountains and shot down one of India's French-built Rafale fighters, Western officials took note. It marked the first time the West had seen the Chinese JC-10 aircraft and PL-15 missiles be deployed in active combat. Western officials have since pored over the details of this clash, asking what this means about China's military capabilities and whether Xi Jinping's nation has finally caught up with the West. Over the past 25 years, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has exploded from a small military that had to generate its own revenue by growing crops to one of the largest and most powerful in the world. ' China is the strongest it's ever been,' said Brigadier General Doug Wickert, the 412th Test Wing commander in the United States air force. 'It has fairly aggressively built a very large force that's been specifically developed to counter our strengths.' Today, the PLA boasts almost a million more troops than the United States and over a thousand more tanks. It has built its navy into the largest in the world with approximately 400 warships and stacked its air force with nearly 2,000 fighter jets. Beijing has also drastically expanded its intelligence capabilities to the point where deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis claimed earlier this week that China has become an ' existential threat to American security in a way we really have never confronted before'. However, while China is stronger today than it has been previously, a look into its actual capabilities show that the PLA still lags in skill and experience and has a tendency to fall one step behind its more seasoned competitor. 'The numbers don't tell the whole story,' noted Gen Wickert. 'China's military has grown in numbers as well as sophistication, but there are still some areas where we have technological advantage.' Every year, a wide array of expos and shows are held across China, which show off the arsenal of one of the most opaque and secretive armed forces in the world. In November, China hosted its annual Zhuhai Air Show where it showcased the J-20 stealth fighter jets, seen as direct competitors to one of the US' strongest fighters, the F-35 Lightning II, and capable of carrying air-to-air missiles like the PL-15s used by Pakistan against India. The HQ-19 anti-ballistic missile system was also on display, as was the new SS-UAV 'Jiu Tan' drone carrier, capable of releasing swarms of Kamikaze attack drones at once, which will set sail on its maiden voyage next month. More recently at the World Radar Expo last week, China trumpeted a new JY-27V radar, which state media claims can detect American fifth-generation stealth fighters, including the F-35 Lightning II. China's navy is also rumoured to be developing a new supercarrier, similar to the USS Gerald Ford, which would be larger than any existing vessel in its fleet. And the army is said to be developing a new 4th generation light tank, which would host cannons capable of firing multiple ammunition types. However, most worrying to the US is Beijing's rapid advancement of its nuclear capabilities. From 2023 to 2024, it added 100 more warheads to its arsenal, rising from 500 to 600, and the country is expected to have more than 1,000 by 2030. According to experts, at least 400 of these are intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the US from the Chinese mainland, including the DF-41, which can travel between 12,000 to 15,000 kilometres. While the US, with 3,700 warheads in its arsenal, continues to hold an advantage, the American government has expressed concern over Beijing's rapid speed. During a senate address in April, US Senator Roger Wicker noted that China's nuclear expansion is now 'at a pace that far outstrips our own'. Timothy Heath, a senior defence researcher and China expert at RAND Corp, explained that Beijing's nuclear progress is likely part of its 'deterrence posture'. 'It's a sign that they don't want to get into a conventional fight with the US,' said Mr Heath. 'Having a nuclear inventory is a way to warn the US not to start a fight.' Beyond its nuclear inventory, there are areas where Chinese advancements are rivalling the US. According to Mr Heath, hypersonic missiles could be one domain in which the PLA has 'surpassed the US in technology'. He also noted that Beijing has become a 'world player in the world market' for military drones, though other experts like Gen Wickert don't agree that there is yet any technology 'where China is ahead'. The PLA's developments have been particularly concerning in the context of a potential conflict over Taiwan – the only possible scenario in which the US and Chinese armies could face one another. Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, which the government in Taipei rejects, and has threatened to invade the island on numerous occasions. As a key arms supplier to Taiwan, former US president Joe Biden had said that the US would come to the country's defence, but Donald Trump has refused to offer a clear position on the issue. Mr Heath explains that China's proximity to Taiwan gives it an advantage because Beijing would have immediate access to 'all ground-based systems'. Meanwhile, the US would have 'to project power from an ocean away'. At the senate address in April, Mr Wicker noted that China is now 'capable of denying US air superiority in the first island chain,' referring to the string of islands in the Pacific, which include parts of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo. This means that China's surface-to-air missiles are now capable of shooting down any US aircraft in the event of a war. Washington has also sounded the alarm over China's cyberwarfare capabilities. In a recent speech at a university in California, Gen Wickert said China had managed to infiltrate the US's electrical grid and plant malware on SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, which monitor critical infrastructure like electricity, water and gas distribution. 'China has gained access to those systems and mapped them, and that is certainly concerning. It's considered an act of war,' Gen Wickert told The Telegraph. The PLA was not always such a fierce competitor. In the 1990s, when Western countries were investing trillions of pounds into their armies, the PLA didn't even have enough money to sustain itself. 'It had a very small budget from the government and was essentially dependent on money-making activities to fund itself,' said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the former Director for China at the US Department of Defence. 'This meant the PLA was investing in factories and services and logistics businesses and in rural areas they would even grow their own food.' While it has come a long way in the decades since, the PLA continues to face significant challenges, which experts say have stopped it from reaching parity with the US. For one, the US military is tried and tested on the battlefield, having fought in several conflicts around the world from Iraq to Afghanistan, while the PLA has not fought a war in decades. China's armed forces also struggle with integration. While the US military is a fully joint force, meaning the different services – from the air force to the navy – work closely together, the PLA remains disjointed. Kitsch Liao, the associate director of the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, noted that the PLA's readiness levels, which measure preparedness for active combat, are also lower than the US's. 'If the US wants to bomb one site, they can assign one aircraft. They don't need another aircraft on standby in case the jet breaks down. The US used to do this in the 1960s and China still has to do that,' said Mr Liao. The US's air force readiness for the last year was just over 60 per cent, which is 'relatively poor', according to Mr Liao, but China's score, which is not made public, is believed to be even lower. Imitate rather than innovate China's defence limitations stem in part from the PLA's inherent structure as an extension of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Unlike militaries in the US or the UK, which are separate from any political entity, the PLA was established to serve the communist party and its primary objective today is to keep the party in power. Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, explained that it would be equivalent to if in the US 'the Republicans had their own army and the Democrats had their own army'. Given the PLA's role in the party, it often focuses its development on political issues rather than security concerns, as evidenced by its fixation on Taiwan, which does not pose any immediate threat to China. The PLA is also hampered by its tendency to imitate rather than innovate. Rather than developing its own cutting-edge hardware, China relies on following closely behind its American counterparts, which makes it very difficult to match or overtake the US. 'They're always one step behind because their methodology for catching up has been technology theft and acquisition,' said Mr Thompson. 'China has always benchmarked itself on other forces and ironically that means that in many cases it can't actually catch up.'
Reuters
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US prepares for long war with China that might hit its bases, homeland: Peter Apps
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."
