Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports a disturbing national defense revelation.
In a war with China, the United States would expend its stock of advanced missiles and bombs in less than a month—and run out of some critical weapons in a matter of days, according to a wargames simulation conducted by the House Select Committee on China.
America’s cache of long-range antiship missiles, critical to defending Taiwan in a sea battle in the case of a Chinese invasion, will run dry within three to seven days, according to the committee’s findings. Within a month, meanwhile, the United States would run out of long-range cruise missiles. Taiwan’s own supply of mid-range antiship missiles would also be expended within a week of battle.
The findings are raising alarm bells among lawmakers, who worry America’s defense industrial base is woefully unprepared to deliver the arms needed once China makes good on its repeated threats to invade Taiwan. With China’s military rapidly growing, U.S. supply lines remain strained amid conflicts in the Middle East and other geopolitical hotspots.
“What we learned is that in a protracted war, our defense industrial base does not have the resources it needs to win that war,” Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), the China committee’s chairman, said in a statement. “It’s stretched thin with different regional conflicts around the world. We need to make sure we shore up our defense industrial base so that we can win a war if it were ever necessary.”
The wargames session, hosted at the end of November, showed the “U.S. military and defense industrial base are being stressed” by global conflicts, including the tumult in the Middle East and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The simulation was run more than 25 times to ensure the accuracy of the results, which repeatedly showed the United States had “insufficient stockpiles of critical munitions for protracted war.” This includes the missiles that would be key to defeating China in any land and sea battle.
