China may outperform the US military in the event of a conflict in Taiwan

A top-secret US government assessment revealed that China would outperform the US military in a war on Taiwan, according to what was reported by The Telegraph newspaper.

The top-secret “Military Superiority” report warns that the United States’ reliance on expensive, advanced weapons makes it vulnerable to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems.

The New York Times reported that a national security official under former President Joe Biden, who reviewed the report, was stunned when he realized that Beijing had “countless alternatives” to every trick we could think of.

The loss of Taiwan, the United States’ main bulwark against Chinese influence in the Western Pacific, would deal a severe strategic and symbolic blow to Washington.

The most advanced US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was recently sent to the Caribbean as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on drug traffickers, will likely be destroyed in the war games described in the report.

The $13bn (£9.75bn) ship, which entered service in 2022 after years of delays, is vulnerable to attacks from diesel-electric submarines, and from China’s arsenal of around 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of traveling at five times the speed of sound.

Beijing displayed its ship-destroying missiles…YJ-17», which is estimated to be 8 times faster than the speed of sound, at a military parade in September.

However, the Pentagon plans to build 9 additional Ford-class aircraft carriers, while no hypersonic missile has been deployed yet.

Eric Gomez, a researcher at the Taiwan Security Monitoring Center, said the final outcome was not clear when he participated in a war exercise simulating a potential conflict with Taiwan, but he noted that the United States suffered heavy losses.

He added to The Telegraph: “The United States is losing a large number of ships during this operation. Many F-35s and other tactical aircraft in the theater of operations are damaged very quickly.

He continued: “I think the high cost was really shocking when we prepared the post-operation summaries and said: OK. You have lost more than 100 fifth-generation aircraft, several destroyers, two submarines, and two aircraft carriers.”

Last year, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “We lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China. He expected that China’s hypersonic missiles would be able to destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.

China has significantly expanded its arsenal of short-, medium- and long-range missiles, which means it is capable of destroying many advanced American weapons before they reach Taiwan.

Meanwhile, major defense companies, down from 10 times what they were in the 1990s, continue to sell more expensive versions of the same ships, planes and missiles to the US government, according to the New York Times.

Defense Department officials realized that the United States was at risk; Because mass production of these complex weapons is impossible, following a series of recent wars, including the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, which have demonstrated the destructive capabilities of relatively cheap weapons such as drones.

Congress has allocated about $1 billion (£750 million) to produce 340,000 small drones over the next two years.

Trump appointed Dan Driscoll, Chief of Staff of the US Armed Forces, in charge of drones, tasked with modernizing old American technology and countering adversary efforts in this field.

However, the United States still lags behind its opponents, and experts previously told The Telegraph that it cannot compete with countries like China, where labor costs are lower and regulations are less stringent.

Any radical change in US policy would likely require huge investments, but defense spending is at its lowest levels in nearly 80 years, at about 3.4 percent of gross domestic product.

Jake Sullivan, a former national security adviser, warned that the United States would quickly run out of essential munitions, such as artillery shells, in the event of a war with China.

Internal assessments of the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) show that China significantly outnumbers the United States in its arsenal of most cruise and ballistic missiles. Both superpowers maintain a stockpile of 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles.