What will happen if the United States goes to war with China? The United States should have the most say on this issue. Recently, Air Force Gen. Haydn, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that the US military conducted a wargame exercise in October last year, and the background was a conflict between China and the United States in the Taiwan Strait, and the result was shocking, the PLA won a complete victory, and the US military suffered an unprecedented fiasco. Of course, the specific details of the U.S. military fiasco are highly classified and unlikely to be revealed in their entirety. According to Haydn, this was not a fiasco in the general sense, but a complete subversion of the combat experience accumulated by the US military over the past 20 years. In other words, the traditional combat mode of the US military does not work, and it cannot be copied against the PLA at all. Because in the past, the US military faced low-level opponents and could crush them by virtue of technological superiority, but now it is facing a big country, and the past tactics are not suitable for dealing with big powers. In addition to this, the PLA has been deeply developing in the past 20 years, making rapid progress, and basically eating through the US military's mode of operation.
Immediately after, Haydn gave two lessons. The first lesson is that the U.S. military cannot take for granted that it can maintain its information superiority in the face of great power adversaries. In the past, the U.S. military faced weak opponents, and for the U.S. military, the battlefield was unilaterally transparent, such as the Gulf War and the Iraq War. However, in the face of a major country like China and Russia, the US military may quickly lose its information superiority and thus lose the initiative in war. The second lesson is that the traditional model of gathering forces could bring ruin to the U.S. military in modern warfare. The reason is that the PLA has developed hypersonic missiles and powerful long-range firepower, and the assembled US military is easily overwhelmed. Finally, Haydn warned that the US military needs to accelerate the transformation of the operational model, and hostile powers such as China and Russia are narrowing the gap with the US military, leaving little time for the US military.
Haydn is a member of the core decision-making level of the US military and must have a thorough understanding of the situation of the US military. Although Haydn's words cannot be fully believed, his views are very valuable and deserve China's high attention, after all, "know thyself and know the other, and never lose a battle." Judging from Haydn's speech, we can at least get this information:
First, when facing a major country, the rich combat experience of the US military is not as useful as imagined. After the end of the Cold War, almost all large-scale local wars were launched by the United States, and the US military has indeed accumulated valuable practical combat experience from it. When discussing the comparison of military strength between China and the United States, the US media often ridicules the PLA for not fighting in decades and lacking actual combat experience, which alone is inferior to that of the US military. However, this statement is false. As Haydn said, the U.S. military used to face some rookies, and the combat experience gained could not deal with the big powers. To put it bluntly, the U.S. military cannot use the experience of strong men beating children to deal with opponents of the same heavyweight.
Second, the U.S. military is promoting the transformation of the operational model. In fact, even if Haydn does not say, we know that in recent years, the US military is promoting the reform of the combat model, proposing new operational concepts, such as distributed kill chains, information fusion, the development of long-range ammunition and so on. At present, the transformation of the US military's combat model has just begun, or it has made some preliminary attempts, and there are still no concrete results. Nevertheless, China should pay close attention to the development of the US military and avoid the gradual narrowing of the gap being widened.
Third, it has cooled the frenzied atmosphere of war against China in the United States. Generally speaking, the top brass of the US military are the hawks among the hawks against China, and it is unlikely that like Haydn, he will "grow China's morale and destroy the prestige of the United States." Obviously, Haydn actually has another meaning in saying this, that is, he wants to tell the war fanatics in the United States that the US military is not as strong as imagined, and that fighting the PLA on the doorstep of China is to find death, so don't think about interfering in the Taiwan Strait by force.
Fourth, peddle the China threat theory and ask the US Congress for more money. People who are familiar with the US military know that the US military asks for money from congress in two ways, one is to cry poverty, the other is to exaggerate foreign threats, and the most commonly used is naturally the Theory of The Chinese Threat. Of course, Haydn's China threat theory is a little different from the past, because he cried miserably and hyped up the Chinese threat theory through the "US military fiasco". Hearing the word "fiasco", the congressional master will definitely be frightened and immediately give money to the US military. With more money, the transformation of the U.S. military will accelerate.
So, if the US military completes its strategic transformation, will it have an advantage against China? Still not! China has long said that it has no intention of challenging the status of the United States, but only wants to develop with peace of mind. This means that China cannot take the initiative to go to war with the United States, and if one day is very unfortunate and China and the United States meet each other, it is only possible that the United States will come to China's doorstep to make trouble. Since it is doing things at China's doorstep, the United States has no hope of winning, and spending more military money is also the result. There is also a more critical problem is that the development speed of the People's Liberation Army is much faster than the US military, the efficiency of military expenditure is also higher, the US military should not try to use the transformation to gain absolute advantages, it is impossible now, and it will be even more impossible in the future. It is safe to say that for a long time in the future, the US military will not be able to shake off the PLA, and even China will surpass the United States in local areas, such as hypersonic missiles. If the hard power of the Two Armies of China and the United States is equal, then the most crucial factor in determining the outcome of the war is not weapons and equipment, but the will and determination of the people. The mission of the PLA is to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, and it has firm determination and will to defeat any invading enemy.