As tensions continue to rise between China and the United States, military strategists are conducting war games in response to the possibility of China invading Taiwan by 2026.
The outcome of the war games are raising major alarms, as they have found that the U.S. would have to lose half of its entire fighter jet fleet, along with tons of warships in order to stop China.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies has been conducting the war games. The center is based in Washington D.C., and is made up of retired military officials and former Pentagon officials.
The war games take into consideration the current weapons and capabilities of each nation, along with what they are expected to have by 2026. It also assumes no nuclear weapons will be used.
Here’s some of the troubling findings from the war games, via Bloomberg:
In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.” “The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.” The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.
The war games have not made any predictions yet on how many lives would be lost or the economic impact of such a conflict between China and the U.S.
To make the situation even more grim, the losses sustained by the U.S. in the simulations have not even taken into account the most difficult hypotheticals. For instance, if China were to conquer the entire island of Taiwan.
There are four more war games that are going to be conducted, and they will look at some alternative scenarios.