(Central News Agency reporter Yin Junjie, New York, 6th) The Wall Street Journal reported that the US military has moved to defend Taiwan in the past five years in response to the new situation of competition with China and Russia. However, due to factors such as budget constraints, slow weapons production, and difficulty recruiting personnel, the US military still has a long way to go to transform itself for future warfare.
This lengthy report examining the challenges faced by the US military in response to the new international situation wrote that after President Lee Teng-hui visited the US in 1995, Beijing launched several military exercise in the Taiwan Strait, prompting the US government to display the most powerful US military in Asia since the Vietnam War, sending several ships The warships crossed the Taiwan Strait, and two aircraft carrier battle groups were used in the region each in second year. But strategists at the Pentagon’s internal think tank see hidden concerns.
They worry that if Beijing uses long-range missiles, anti-satellite weapons and electronic warfare, it can attack US bases and ports in the Western Pacific, which shows its military dependence, so that the US will not States dare. to intervene when regional conflicts occur.
Led by defense strategists, former US President George W. Bush campaigned to skip a generation of technology and counter Beijing’s anti-access strategy with advanced tools such as long-range weapons, sensors and data-sharing technology.
Unexpectedly, on September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by terrorists, which changed the threat facing the United States and the mission of the Pentagon.
Jeff McKitrick, a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), who used to work at the Pentagon think tank, recalled: “At one point, we thought, ‘Wow, the transformation of the military is going to start’, and then 9/11 happened, Everyone’s focus is on the global war on terror.”
After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has finally shifted its focus. The Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy announced that the United States will respond to the new situation of “great power competition” with China and Russia.
Among them, preventing China from attacking Taiwan is a challenge for the United States. Pentagon officials concluded that an attempt to retake Taiwan after China had conquered it would plunge the United States into a protracted war that could encourage China to use nuclear weapons. The United States must demonstrate the ability to prevent Beijing from taking over Taiwan, a requirement included in the national defense strategy released last year by the administration of current President Joe Biden.
Back in 2019, Lieutenant General Clint Hinote, transferred back to Washington from Baghdad, used his authority in the US Air Force’s Office of Future Warfare to design a secret war game to evaluate how the two US military forces would States perform against China’s use of force. against Taiwan. . US bombers and long-range missiles form the “foreign force”, while the “internal force” consisting of aircraft, ships and troops is fighting within the attack range of the Chinese side. The conclusion is that neither approach can succeed on its own.
“We must mix to protect Taiwan and Japan,” Jinot said.
Since then, the US side has been simulating and experimenting to get the best formula. The Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff recently tweeted that the US could prevent China from invading Taiwan by force if a conflict occurred in the Taiwan Strait in the late 2020s, but both sides suffered heavy casualties. This campaign assumes that the United States will master new weapons, tactics and take advantage of the Pentagon’s current military posture.
In response to future warfare, the US Marine Corps has abandoned tanks and transformed into a naval infantry force, which can attack Chinese ships from small islands in the Western Pacific. A new Marine Corps Littoral Regiment, which operates near the coast and will include anti-ship missiles, is expected to be based in Okinawa, Japan, in 2025.
During an exercise in May 2021, the US Marine Corps transported the High Mobility Multiple Launch Rocket System (HIMARS) by sea to the coast of Alaska, loaded it into a C-130 transport aircraft, and transported it to a base in the desert for the purpose of training Marine Corps Tactics for attacking the Chinese navy on the western Pacific islands.
After the US Army’s electronic warfare, air defense and short-range engineering capabilities have been weakened by budget pressures and the war on terror, it is developing a new generation of weapons systems that can attack further targets. type of hypersonic missile this fall, but he must have the rights of use in the Pacific region, in order to play a role in dealing with China.
The US Navy is facing budget pressures, personnel shortages, and limited US shipbuilding capabilities. Currently, it plans to expand the fleet to more than 355 manned ships, but it is still smaller than the current number of the Chinese Navy. The United States will have about 290 ships in the short term.
The US Air Force has one of the oldest and smallest fleets in its 75-year history, but the first B-21 bomber leaves the factory as the military tests a new hypersonic jet-fired missile combat, laying plans to disperse aircraft installations in the Pacific are pulling, retrofitting aging B-52 bombers to fill gaps in the fleet, and acquiring advanced weapons for attacking the invading Chinese forces.
Annual US military spending has been more than 800 billion US dollars (about NT$24.5 trillion), but US and former defense officials say the transition over the years have happened because of the focus on the war on terror, high pursuit. – price weapons but lack of results, and the budget within the US Bickering government, delays caused by differences over the urgency of China’s threats, ongoing concerns in the Middle East, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have also absorbed attention and resources.
Consolidation of the US defense industry has left the Pentagon facing a decline in arms suppliers. Shipyards are struggling to produce the submarines the US Navy says are essential to countering the larger Chinese Navy. Weapons designers are busy catching up with China and Russia developing hypersonic missiles. .
Last year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington, simulated China launching an amphibious assault on Taiwan. The results showed that the United States had run out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles in less than a week. .
In addition, the recruitment of US military personnel is difficult to meet the standards. The people are tired of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years. The full recruitment system can cause a shortage of US military personnel. The plan to deploy more US troops. within the range of an attack from China not yet completed.
If the conflict between the United States and China gives Russia the confidence to take further action against Eastern Europe, the United States and its allies will have to fight on both sides. Both China and Russia have nuclear weapons, and the war could spread to the Arctic Circle, where the US does not have as many icebreakers and ports as Russia, and Moscow appears ready to welcome Beijing’s help in the Arctic Circle .
Once China takes control of the South China Sea and Taiwan, it will control the important waterways through which trillions of dollars of goods pass each year, and it will also control the supply of advanced semiconductors, threatening the security of Japan and other allies of the United States, and challenge the dominant position of the United States in this region since the Second World War.
The US military still outperforms its main rival in terms of capabilities, China faces obstacles in improving its large-scale amphibious assault capabilities, and Russia’s military weaknesses are on full display in the Ukraine, wrote the report. However, even if the US military expands the use of bases in the Philippines and Japan and deploys them dispersedly, the defense of Taiwan still requires troops to travel far and wide to fight from within range of China’s attacks, and many of the advanced weapons developed by the US military for the New World Bureau will not be ready until the 2030s.
Hinot said frankly that the pace of transformation of the US military is sometimes not ideal, and the battle for budgets often suffers. “The sense of urgency is deeper now, but we know how far this road has to go.” (Editor: Guo Zhonghan) 1120307
