China Not Ready to Take on US, but Is ‘Rapidly Closing the Gap,’ Generals Testify

China’s military planners publicly proclaim the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be the world’s dominant military power by 2049, and the first step in that ascension is controlling the South China Sea to incorporate Taiwan, by force if necessary, into the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) by 2027.

None of this is going to happen, Secretary of Defense Gen. Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Appropriations Subcommittee during a marathon March 23 hearing on the Biden administration’s $863 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) defense budget request.

“This is a strategy-driven budget—and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Austin testified. “The PRC is our pacing challenge. And we’re driving hard to meet it. We’re investing in a more resilient force posture in the Indo-Pacific and increasing the scale and scope of our exercises with our partners.”

“Right now, today, as we sit here, we are currently standing watch on freedom’s frontier with nearly a quarter of a million troops—250,000 troops—in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America,” Milley said, noting at least 120,000 of those troops are stationed in forward-deployed installations “west of the date line,” or western Pacific and Indian oceans, and more are coming.

The two generals and Pentagon Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord ferreted through the constellation of challenges facing the United States and its allies during the hearing, covering everything from boosting the nation’s industrial capacity to sustaining munitions supplies being taxed by the “burn rate” in Ukraine to threats posed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, North Korea, Iran, and terrorist organizations around the globe.

But China’s extensive military modernization over the last decade and increasingly aggressive posture in the South China Sea, where it is building bases on man-made islands straddling sea and air trade routes, and in menacing Taiwan, was the recurrent top theme of the hearing.

The House panel peppered the generals and McCord about the specifics in how the United States is preparing Taiwan for an invasion by the PRC’s military, which is openly violating the island’s air and sea spaces in practice invasions.

Although the PRC has been engaged in a decade-long military build-up, subcommittee Chair Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) said it has become more openly hostile and bold in its adventurism by President Joe Biden’s “weakness” since he assumed office in January 2021.

The nation faces many “geopolitical challenges,” he said, that are “compounded by China’s rapid military modernization. They’re building up to take Taiwan. Weakness is provocative. This administration’s weakness has emboldened authoritarians around the world”—most notably, the CCP-led PRC.

Defending Taiwan

The three Pentagon officials said the United States is taking numerous steps to provide Taiwan with a “porcupine” strategy that would make an invasion too costly for the PRC to win, never mind potentially lose.

The budget request includes $9.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a 40-percent increase over last year’s defense budget, to better defend Hawaii and Guam, and build “resilient and distributed air basing, new missile warning and tracking architecture, construction to enable enhanced posture … and multinational information sharing, training, and experimentation” across the region.

The Philippines has agreed to nearly double the number of bases where American forces can operate and Japan has doubled its defense spending, they said.

The 12th Marine Littoral Regiment, which Austin described as “one of the most advanced formations in the Corps” is being deployed to Okinawa “so that we can better deter conflict in the First Island Chain.”

The U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom has formed the “AUKUS partnership” that will “build game-changing defense advantages that will deter aggression, promote a free and open Indo-Pacific, and boost our defense industrial capability,” Austin said.

The U.S. is deploying up to 200 military specialists, including special-operations forces and Marines, to Taiwan to bolster training programs, the largest deployment of American forces in decades on the island, while the Michigan National Guard is engaged in “battalion-sized” training of Taiwanese military at Camp Grayling in northern Michigan.

The FY24 military budget request includes $170 billion for new weapons systems, “the largest procurement budget in the nation’s history,” including $61 billion to “develop, modernize and procure lethal air power” in direct challenge to China’s investments in naval and air defense advances in the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific theater of operations, Austin said.

The proposed $170 billion procurement proposal also includes $48.1 billion for three new submarines and four destroyers/frigates designed to thwart a Chinese Navy that, numerically, is the world’s largest

In addition, in direct response to China investments, the Pentagon is seeking $29.8 billion for missile “defeat and defense” programs and $11 billion to develop hypersonic and long-range subsonic missiles.

“This is a budget that will meet the moment,” Austin said.

Alliances, Accelerated Procurement

Calvert wasn’t so sure the Pentagon’s budget is meeting the moment, not when “China is building 20 ships a year” and now has more than 400 ships in its navy “and, as I understand, capable vessels.”

This is happening while the U.S. Navy wants to decommission 11 ships, including eight before their planned “service life” is expired, while seeking to build nine ships, he said.

Under the current plan, Calvert said, the U.S. Navy would have a 291-ship fleet by FY28, when the PRC says it will be ready to invade Taiwan, despite having a goal of 371 ships by then. The navy is also down at least two squadrons for its aircraft carriers, he added.

“How does having fewer ships deter China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific?” he asked.

“We have the most powerful and dominant navy in the world and we will continue to ensure it remains that way,” Austin said, noting the $48 billion for nine new navy ships is the largest single-year procurement request for warships in decades. “I am comfortable that we are moving in the right direction.

“You can’t catch a ball in left field if you only have a guy in right field. Numbers do matter,” Calvert said, noting the Pentagon has yet to produce an updated 30-year ship-building plan.

Austin and Milley said numbers don’t tell the whole story, especially since the United States would not be taking the PRC on by itself but operating with Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, the UK, with support across Micronesia in the South Pacific.

“Our network of allies and partners magnifies our power and expands our security. And no other country on Earth has anything like it,” Austin said. “We always fight with our allies and partners. The capacity they bring to table multiplies our overall capacities in any instance. We will be able to draw on their capabilities.

“The United States never fights alone.” Milley reiterated. “A key source of our strength to keep the peace and prevail in war is our large global network of alliances and partnerships.”

These are advantages the PRC and Putin’s Russia, for that matter, do not have, the generals said.

Nor is the PRC as proficient operationally as U.S. forces, Milley said. “Just this month,” U.S. forces around the globe participated in 63 joint operations and exercises with allies.

“On a weekly basis,” he continued, “the U.S. military moves the equivalent of a small city in logistics across the globe.”

Milley said “one third of our navy—100 ships—are on patrol now, at sea across the globe, protecting freedom of navigation” with much of that emphasis on the fabled 7th Fleet in the Indo-Pacific.

Of 4,680 commands, “60 percent of active duty force is at highest rate of readiness” in decades, he said.

Calvert said when recently touring Taiwan as part of a congressional delegation, “every single member” of Taiwan’s military leadership commented on “the extremely slow pace” of U.S. defense  procurement.

The generals said Congress created and orchestrates the procurement process, something the Pentagon has complained about since there was a Pentagon, but the budget invests $30 billion in upfront infrastructure for bases and programs that will speed ensuing procurement in years to come.

“This is a budget aimed squarely at keeping America secure in the world of the 21st century,” Austin said, noting the $863 billion defense budget includes $842 billion for the Pentagon—the remainder is for the Department of Energy to build nuclear weapons—“which is a 3.2-percent increase over Fiscal Year 23 and 13.4 percent higher than Fiscal Year 22.”

A 3.2 percent increase with 6 percent inflation “is essentially a cut,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) said the proposed defense budget focuses on what needs focus right here and now—China.

“If we don’t prioritize security today, I fear we risk a much costlier fight with China down the road, whether that is in 2025, or 20 years, or 30 years down the road,” he said.

Milley said despite all its saber-rattling, PRC military forces are not ready to engage with the United States and its allies now, but is “rapidly closing the gap.”

The budget’s focus on the PRC and the Indo-Pacific region has CCP leaders rattled and realizing any conflict with the US and its allies anytime soon would be a winless disaster for all, but especially them.

“War with China is neither inevitable or imminent,” he said, and the FY24 budget request will help ensure it remains that way.

If the PRC isn’t convinced, Milley said, it can learn the hard way.

“This military is ready. We are prepared to fight tonight and prepared to fight in the future,” he said. “This budget prevents war and prepares us to fight it if we have to.”