As early as the beginning of 2023, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a well-known American think tank, conducted several rounds of war games to simulate the military conflict between China and the United States against the backdrop of a war in the Taiwan Strait.
The United States strikes at China
In one of the war games, the United States simulated a strike on various Chinese facilities in an attempt to finalize the tactics of the United States to seize the initiative in the war in the "Sino-American war."
In this war game, the United States destroyed China's counterattack capability and war potential with five waves of strikes, and won the war.
American fleet
A brief summary of the wave attacks in the US war games is that in the first wave of strikes, the United States dispatched hundreds of electronic warfare aircraft and early warning aircraft in the air to destroy China's early warning system headed by radar stations under the cover of a large number of unmanned aerial vehicles.
After China initially lost its early warning capability, the United States launched a large number of weapons outside the defense zone to strike at China's military forces with airfields and air defense systems, destroying China's counterattack capability.
At this point, about 1,300 targets in China will be destroyed by the US military, and the eastern region will basically have no combat capability.
The third step is to dispatch a large number of bombers to strike at areas where China has concentrated industrial facilities, destroying most of China's industrial capacity.
American bombers bombed
The fourth step is to extend this strike to the Chinese mainland and expand the scope of the strike.
After a few months of blows, China's industrial production basically stagnated, and it completely lost the ability to wage a continuous war with the United States.
The final step is to blockade China's maritime communications with the outside world and cut off the import of goods to China.
If these five steps are completed, then China will be completely reduced to fish on the board and will no longer have the ability to fight the United States.
But does the United States really have the ability to defeat China in a Sino-American war?
American
The United States could not gain the upper hand
The answer is no. With regard to the US war games this time, it can only be said that the United States has abandoned its original doctrine of firepower superiority and learned Chang Kaishen's theory of "superiority lies in me."
In the above scenario, the United States cannot even complete the first step.
In the first step, the United States will rely on its electronic warfare superiority to undermine China's early warning capability and make China's air defense system blind.
And there is a prerequisite for the United States to accomplish this, that is, the United States' electronic warfare capabilities are stronger than China's.
Electronic warfare concept map
In fact, the electronic warfare forces of China and the United States have not fought before, and since 2016, the electronic warfare forces of China and the United States have begun to confront each other one after another.
Although it is not clear which of China and the United States is stronger or weaker in their electronic warfare capabilities, the successive exchanges between China and the United States in this regard in the past few years have often lasted for a long time.
This shows that even if China's electronic warfare capabilities are weaker than those of the United States, the gap will not be too large.
If the United States wants to destroy the Iraqi army's early warning capability in the electronic confrontation between China and the United States, as it did in the Gulf War in the past, it is wishful thinking.
When the United States is unable to quickly destroy China's early warning capability, then the military forces in the rear will have sufficient time to react, and there will be no follow-up US military forces that will be in a no-man's land as expected.
PLA fleet
So in reality, if the U.S. military dares to come, China has enough ability to make it come back.
And when it comes to military strike capabilities, China strikes faster than the United States.
You must know that China is currently equipped with a large number of hypersonic missiles, which include the United States from the first island chain to the second island chain.
Unless the United States uses intercontinental missiles to strike at the Chinese mainland, the United States must rely on military installations on the first and second island chains to fly fighter jets to China's periphery.
However, due to the presence of a large number of hypersonic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in China, it is difficult for US military installations in the first and second island chains to survive.
With the strike speed of hypersonic missiles, China is enough to completely destroy these military facilities in a matter of minutes to half an hour.
Chinese Dongfeng-17 missile
In other words, when the "Sino-US war" breaks out, if the United States does not take the lead in destroying the capabilities of China's rocket forces within a few minutes to half an hour, then the military forces of the United States in the first and second island chains will be destroyed by China first.
It is clear that the United States did not have the ability to destroy the Chinese rocket forces first. After all, the United States has not had hypersonic missiles in service until now, it does not even have medium-range ballistic missiles.
With the US military structure, almost all of the US standoff strike capabilities now rely on air-launched long-range missiles or land-based subsonic cruise missiles.
Air-launched long-range missiles require fighter planes to take off and fly, and land-based cruise missiles, subsonic missiles, are very slow to fly from the second island chain of the United States to the Chinese mainland.
American Tomahawk missiles
With this kind of strike speed, I am afraid that after the first round of missiles washed the ground of the first and second island chains, China will start to send bombers to engage in carpet bombing, and these US cruise missiles have not yet reached the Chinese mainland.
The United States does not have the ability to fight high-intensity, large-scale wars
As a matter of fact, with the overall military capability of the United States, it no longer has the ability to conduct a high-intensity and large-scale war.
In this Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States has shown a shortage of production capacity for ordinary artillery shells.
Ukrainian artillery in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict
Although the United States has never stopped producing various long-range missiles and has a certain amount of reserves, does the United States really have missile reserves for a full-scale war with a big country like China?
If the United States were to completely destroy China's military capabilities, the missiles needed would be astronomical.
Even if China does not resist at all and is open to the United States to bomb, the United States will need at least 3,000~5,000 missiles of various types if it wants to completely destroy China's various military facilities and important civilian facilities.
It is not impossible for the United States to come up with this number of missiles, but it is close to the entire US missile stockpile.
So the United States is faced with a very huge problem, that is, what after completely destroying China's counterattack capability?
American
When a full-scale war breaks out, the destruction of existing military forces and industrial facilities is not the end of the war.
When the United States fought the Afghan War, after overthrowing the original Afghan government, did the Afghan war end?
China is a country with a population of 1.4 billion and strong cohesion, and the war potential will not be squeezed out so easily.
When the United States destroys China's apparent military power, it will face China's continued military resistance, as it did in the Afghanistan war.
The Afghan Taliban rebelling against the U.S. military
Not to mention that the United States has little chance of gaining the upper hand in this war.
Resources:
[1] Global Network, "Why Are U.S. Future Weapons Successively Encountering Setbacks? Expert: Exposing the Deep-seated Problems of the U.S. Defense Industry System"
[2] The Paper: "The Six Trump Cards of the Rocket Army, from the Coast to the Second Island Chain, Comprehensively Attack the Invading Enemy"