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The point of wargames and the work of the committee is to find issues and address them, not so that one can panic about nonsense like China building ships faster than we can build missiles.

As noted, the result of the wargames was that China lost. That's not really the sort of result that the CCP would be looking for. They want stability. Losing a war, and a whole a bunch of young men, in a patrilineal society demographically warped by the CCPs one child policies ain't a recipe for stability.

China hasn't fought a war since '79. They probably shouldn't start learning how to fight again by trying an amphibious assault on an island that is mostly mountains, jungles, and cities. The US in '45 had more material advantages than the PRC ever will, and a lot of experience with amphibious assault, and they turned away from invading Taiwan to go to the incredibly costly invasions of the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, because as bad as that was, it was so much less difficult.

Note further that the wargames assumes that the fight is only between the US forces in theater vs a massed Chinese attack, because all the rest of the US military is dealing with "some other crisis".

America doesn't have great supply chains for building artillery shells, because they aren't important for our strategic focus China, and they weren't needed in quantity for our last military conflict, which was evidently about spending trillions of dollars ensuring that Afghanistan could have a woman's soccer team for a few years.

Just because the US can be more thoughtfully prepared doesn't that China is some unstoppable giant.

I think after the russian invasion we can kinda throw these kinds of simulations in the trash. They're not reliable and are published just to score brownie points by the parties that need them at that time.

Russia was supposed to be the 2nd military power in the world, and they couldn't do in 3 years what they thought they'd do in 3 days. A much smaller country, with a much smaller army, with surplus 90s western tech (at least in the first year) held against them. They didn't get air superiority at any point. Their navy was taken out of the warzone by a country with no navy of their own! And so on, and so forth.

China being a military superpower isn't credible. It sure wants to be seen as one, but an army is more than numbers on a pps presentation. They build tons of ships but do they have trained people to man them? (recent incident with PH coast guard making the cn navy have a kiss should be a hint)

Total displacement is meaningless when you put in conscripted, untrained people, no matter how motivated and patriotic they are (and I don't doubt they'd be).

Or their rockets that were found to have subpar prop mixtures. Or.. or.. or...

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I say this as an european: the US isn't the best because they have big number goes up in military power. They do, of course, but it's much more than that. They have been actively involved in a conflict since the 2nd ww, with only a few years breaks. They have good training, practice in real world scenarios, and more importantly practice and are actively working with lots of allied forces.

Militarily, desert storm, iraq, syria and all the other coalition actions were "done" in 3 days. With air supremacy in 24 hours, usually. Watching the reports on how those operations unfolded always seems like a game of starcraft with cheating AI. You build turrets and cannons in your base, and the enemy brings stealth banshees and blink stalkers. It's not fair.

The US won WWII because of it's industrial dominance, they didn't even have much of a military before the war, they built it when it was needed. Since WWII the US war machine has been used primarily for bullying much weaker powers.

Meanwhile China has risen to become the dominant industrial superpower. So I don't even care much what China's military looks like at the moment. If they see fit to switch to a wartime economy, they will, and woe be the nation that thought it would be a good idea to pick a fight with them.

You’re right that Russia’s failures in Ukraine show that paper strength doesn’t translate into battlefield effectiveness but this conflict is poor evidence for your assertion that China will lose in a military conflict with America over Taiwan. Sure Russia has absolutely shit the bed in the beginning of this conflict but now they're being carried by China's massive economy and they're slowly but surely winning this conflict which has become a proxy war between China and the US.

China's navy isn't the only one that has accidents.[0][1][2][3] and the kind of corruption that lead to their rockets having improperly mixed propellant also isn't unique to the Chinese navy either.[4][5]

You're absolutely right to question the quality of new recruits or conscripts in the armed forces and again China isn't the only one to have these kinds of problems.[6] After wasting trillions on losing two pointless wars the general public opinion of the US armed forces is in the dumpster and I'm skeptical that morale and enlistment will see a boost if the US goes to war with China over Taiwan.

Should a conflict with the US and China escalate you will see an unprecedented level of cyberattacks and fifth column attacks on the US due to the ubiquitous presence of Chinese technology in America and Chinese immigrants, some of whom will undoubtedly play the role of spies and saboteurs.

The US can have all the fancy stealth planes they want but it doesn't mean anything if they don't have enough missiles to arm them or the infrastructure to build missiles because they spent the last 25 years air conditioning tents in the middle east[7] and their electrical grid has just been sabotaged.

[0] https://www.foxnews.com/us/uss-harry-s-truman-ship-collision...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fitzgerald_and_MV_ACX_Crys...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bonhomme_Richard_(LHD-6)#J...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_M...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal

[5] https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/retired-us-navy-admiral-f...

[6] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-...

[7] https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-...

> Sure Russia has absolutely shit the bed in the beginning of this conflict but now they're being carried by China's massive economy and they're slowly but surely winning this conflict

By what measure? All the declared objectives - "denazification" (the destruction of Ukraine's sovereignty), "demilitarization" (the destruction of Ukraine's armed forces), "protection of ethnic Russians" (now dying under Russian missile attacks), and so on - have obviously failed. The frontline has been static for years, while Russian losses are at record highs. Despite hundreds of thousands of dead and nearly a million wounded since 2022, Russia has not managed to capture even a single one of Ukraine's 22 regional capitals. Is this how victory is supposed to look like?

It's not whether China has the ability to do so. It's at what cost. Any invasion of Taiwan would require an invasion fleet so large there is simply no way they would be able to hide it. The entire world would know about it well before it happened. The costs of invasion would be absolutely staggering, with little to no benefits. The CCP values the stability of their regime above all else. They're rattling sabers and trying to win concessions.

> China dominates the shipbuilding industry[1] and can easily rebuild whatever ships they lose while the US will be dependent on South Korea and Japan to rebuild whatever they lose.

US builds military ships themself. Also, this will be very asymmetrical war: missiles which can destroy ship costs XM vs XXXM for military ship cost.

> US builds military ships themself.

Not recently...

Why do you think so? AFAIK, all navy ships are build in USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arleigh_Burke-class_de...

Military ships are still built here. However, our loss of the commercial sector here means there's less talent and factories to tap into in the event of a total war scenario.

I get the impression from your comment that you did not read the first source that I linked above. If you only read one of the many links that I provided please read this one:

https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...

The key takeaway is that the United States does not have the stockpiles of munitions necessary to engage in a long-term conflict with China nor does it have the industrial capacity to scale up production in a timely fashion.

Additionally, American shipbuilding capacity has completely atrophied both from a decline of infrastructure and even worse a startling decline in blue-collar institutional knowledge. It has become so dire that the US Navy is looking to outsource ship production to South Korea.

It should be obvious at this point that China dominates in mass-production and they'll absolutely be able to out-produce the US in both ships and missiles in a long term conflict.

> The key takeaway is that the United States does not have the stockpiles of munitions necessary to engage in a long-term conflict with China

I think this is missleading conclusion, my reading of the link is that it says that in 4 week of active phase, US stockpile will deplete, it doesn't assess what damage China will receive, will it have enough ships/airplanes after US activated thousands of munitions, and will it rebuild them faster than US will restock missiles inventory (99% not).

> US Navy is looking to outsource ship production to South Korea.

could you provide citation?

Here's a recent story about the outsourcing of ship production to South Korea[0]

I recommend that you take a look at this document[1] to get a better picture of the shortcomings of US munitions stockpiles and manufacturing capacity.

I'm not sure why you think that China, a nation renowned for their mass manufacturing capacity would be unable to rebuild equipment lost in a war over Taiwan. China absolutely dominates in steel production[2] and aluminum production[3] and no one compares to them in electronics manufacturing and assembly. They completely own the solar panel and battery markets and it seems that no one can compete with their electric cars.

While America keeps chipping away at its own soft power, institutions and manufacturing capacity China is building the juggernaut industrial capacity necessary to dominate their region.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/08/business/us-south-korea-milit...

[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/empty-bins-wartime-environment...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...

> Here's a recent story about the outsourcing of ship production to South Korea[0]

its not for production but maintenance. Your link explicitly states that current law doesn't allow to produce Navy ships outside of US.

Furthermore, Koreans can't produce military ships for US simply because they can't produce such ships for themselves domestically, their newest destroyers have Korean hull, but propulsion, electronics, radars, many armaments are American: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejong_the_Great-class_destroy...

> I'm not sure why you think that China, a nation renowned for their mass manufacturing capacity would be unable to rebuild equipment lost

I explained, it will be asymmetrical war: US will be targeting ships which cost way more than missiles cost.

Each of 4k tomahawk will target targets 10-100x cost of actual tomahawk (airplanes, power plants, docked ships).

Also, your previous report ignores old harpoon inventory, which if deployed in Taiwan will create denial zone for Chinese navy.

In the context of outsourcing ship production the original line I wrote was "It has become so dire that the US Navy is looking to outsource ship production to South Korea." I feel that the link that I have provided is a pretty solid source regarding the US making moves towards outsourcing ship production to South Korea and your nitpicking what I wrote and the source I provided doesn't add much to the conversation.

The point I'm trying to make with all of this is that the US simply lacks the industrial capacity to produce sufficient materiel for a protracted war with China. And not only does it currently lack the capacity, there is no indication that the political or social structures that dominate American discourse see this as a priority.

You describe this asymmetrical warfare technique of the US using missiles that have a fraction of the cost of the ships that they're targeting as if it's a unique strategy when it's the exact same thing that the Chinese are going to be doing.

The difference is that the Chinese have the ability to build many more missiles, and many more ships, and they're not nearly as exposed to cyber attacks and fifth column sabotage as the US is. So what will likely happen is they'll both survive the first round of engagements over Taiwan with the US narrowly winning and then the Chinese will rebuild more and faster and will win the next round of engagements. Or even worse the US will just let China have Taiwan because the political structure of the US is so unbelievably dysfunctional.

It's not like I want any of this to happen either. I'd love to live in a world where China was a non Authoritarian country that didn't have ambitions of dominating its neighbours but that just isn't the world we live in.

I find it dismaying that anytime I bring up my concerns about this matter online people are so quick to dismiss them with little thought. There are a lot of people who consider the US being the hegemonic military force of the plant to be a fundamental part of reality and they just can't fathom a scenario where that isn't the case.

Either way we're all going to find out in 18 months. I hope I'm wrong about this.

> your nitpicking what I wrote and the source I provided doesn't add much to the conversation.

lol, you wrote clearly: "Here's a recent story about the outsourcing of ship production to South Korea[0]"

I am confused how else it can be read as not "about the outsourcing of ship production to South Korea"

> if it's a unique strategy when it's the exact same thing that the Chinese are going to be doing.

they won't be doing this, they are surrounded by US military bases and don't have ability to project power to US territory, and US doesn't have plans to invade China, so ships don't need to come close to coastline.

sorry, ignored rest of your speculations, because imo they grounded in nothing.