A top-secret US government assessment has concluded that China would emerge victorious in a war over Taiwan, dealing a severe blow to American military dominance in the region reports The Telegraph.
The highly classified “Overmatch Brief” warns that the US’s reliance on costly and sophisticated weapons leaves it vulnerable to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers.
A national security official under President Joe Biden who reviewed the document reportedly turned pale upon discovering that Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve,” according to The New York Times.
The loss of Taiwan, a key US ally and bulwark against Chinese power in the western Pacific, would deliver a devastating strategic and symbolic blow to Washington.
USS Gerald R Ford, America’s most advanced aircraft carrier, often destroyed in wargames
The brief outlines wargames in which the USS Gerald R Ford, the US’s most advanced aircraft carrier, is frequently destroyed.
The $13bn (£9.75bn) vessel, which entered service in 2022 after years of delays, is vulnerable to attacks from diesel-electric submarines and China’s arsenal of some 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at five times the speed of sound.
Eric Gomez, a research fellow at the Taiwan Security Monitor, participated in a wargame simulating a Taiwan conflict and noted that while the end result was unclear, the US suffered heavy losses.
“The US loses a lot of ships in the process. A lot of F-35s and other tactical aircraft in the theatre are degraded pretty rapidly too,” he told The Telegraph.
Defence Secretary admits US loses “every time” in Pentagon’s war games against China
Last year, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth admitted that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China, predicting that the Asian country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.
China has significantly expanded its arsenal of short, medium, and intermediate-range missiles, enabling it to destroy many of the US’s advanced weapons well before they could reach Taiwan.
As tensions between the US and China continue to escalate over the fate of Taiwan, the revelations from the “Overmatch Brief” serve as a stark warning of the challenges the American military may face in a potential conflict with its Asian rival.
The report underscores the need for the US to adapt its military strategies and technologies to counter China’s growing military capabilities and maintain its strategic edge in the region.
