As war rages in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip and the European Union prepares to send a flotilla to the Red Sea to prevent attacks on merchant ships by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the US is feverishly preparing for a possible engagement with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A vulnerable point for the US is its military logistics in the Pacific<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For the US preparing for a possible conflict over Taiwan, the “Talisman Saber” exercises had a much more discrete value, since they “helped” build up new stockpiles of military equipment that were installed in Australia after the end of the exercises in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US and its allies are increasingly concerned that in the coming years Chinese President Xi Jinping could order his military to occupy Taiwan, the democratically-ruled island that China considers its own territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the US military is taking a hard look at its own military readiness and trying to cover its logistics network in a critical area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Talisman Saber’s equipment included about 330 vehicles and trailers and 130 containers at warehouses in Badiana, north-east Victoria, the Army says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The amount of equipment, which the US military now has, is enough to supply about three logistics companies, with up to 500 or more soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s the kind of material needed for a future exercise, a natural disaster, or a war. There are a number of other countries in the region where the US already has agreements to do this. US military logistics in the Pacific are one of the US’s biggest vulnerabilities in any potential conflict over Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chinese Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The US concluded that China would likely try to bomb fuel supplies or supply ships, crippling US air and sea power without having to hit its fighter jets or sink the US fleet of surface warships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response, the US is trying to expand its military supply chain hubs across the region, including warehouses in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Milestone year in 2027 for occupation of Taiwan by China<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The logistics arm of the US military, the US Transportation Command (TransCom), has had a major success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It funneled more than 299 million kilograms of equipment and over 2 million artillery rounds to the Ukrainian military in its war with Russia. Supporting Taiwan, about 100 miles off China’s coast, would be much more difficult, U.S. officials and experts acknowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US has not officially said it would intervene if China attacked Taiwan, but President Joe Biden has repeatedly suggested he would deploy US troops to defend the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xi has ordered his military to be ready to occupy Taiwan by 2027, US officials say, but many analysts see this as an effort to mobilize his military rather than a timetable for an invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ammunition supplies top the list of priorities in the Indo-Pacific, followed by fuel, food and spare parts. If they run out of ammunition this will be an immediate problem in terms of planning for an emergency in Taiwan which is already underway. US officials warn that in a major conflict the navy’s ships could quickly run out of missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China will deliberately hit some of the logistics hubs to make it difficult for the United States to maintain business in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To counter such vulnerabilities, the US military is looking to places like Australia as safer locations to store equipment, even as it expands cooperation with the Philippines, Japan and other partners in the Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Biden administration announced in July that the US would also establish a temporary logistics center in Badiana with the aim of eventually establishing a “permanent logistics support area” in Queensland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to an internal US military document, the facility at Badiana could accommodate more than 300 vehicles and had 800 pallet spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July, the U.S. Air Force conducted Mobility Guardian 23, an exercise in the Indo-Pacific with Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom that included air refueling and medical evacuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Change of mind by the US military<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For decades, the United States has not had to worry about a foreign power targeting its supply chain bases. This allowed planners to focus on efficiency by adopting the just-in-time supply model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach led to the cost-saving decision to set up large bases, such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany, that would be safe from attacks by the Taliban and Islamic State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a conflict with China could make major bases, which include Camp Humphreys near Seoul, prime targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This risk is prompting a shift to a more costly approach to logistics that involves dispersing US inventories and prepositioning supplies across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another costly problem is the aging US carrier fleet. The average age of ships designed to carry heavy cargo such as tanks in a conflict zone is 44 years, with some older than 50 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A sweeping analysis by CNAS concluded that the Department of Defense has systematically underinvested in logistics in terms of money, mental energy, physical assets and personnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n US-China war in the Pacific is inevitable<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our assessment based on the above is that we are going through a period of intense US-China preparation for a military confrontation in the Pacific, where it is noteworthy that it is the only region of the planet where Russia-China-North Korea, rivals of the US, are geographically located.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is our view that war in the Pacific is inevitable, since there are three separate possible theaters of operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of China with Taiwan, of North Korea with South Korea and Japan and that of Russia with Japan for the Kuril Islands. The common denominator in all three theaters of operations is the USA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As war rages in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip and the European Union prepares to send a flotilla to the Red Sea to prevent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[833,3],"tags":[4484,404,161,4937,215,70],"class_list":["post-17318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia-geopolitical-issues","category-geopolitical","tag-asia-pacific-region","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-military-logistics","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17320,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions\/17320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}