As we have repeatedly written, while Western media and political attention, including in the United States, is today focused on Russia and the conflict in Ukraine, it is indeed China that preoccupies the Pentagon's strategists above all.
Indeed, apart from its nuclear capabilities, Moscow no longer has the military, economic and demographic capabilities to represent a major threat to Washington and NATO, especially since its armies have suffered heavily since the start of the conflict, with significant losses in men and materials.
China, for its part, has a very dynamic economy, supported by considerable financial reserves, as well as a population of 1,4 billion people. including 25 million supernumerary men aged 20 to 40, and now industrial and technological capacities coming tangent to those of the United States.
To meet this challenge, the Pentagon has bet on technology, in particular to compensate for its future weakness in terms of mass, relying on autonomous systems such as aerial and naval drones, advanced kinetic systems like hypersonic missiles, and superior capabilities in the more traditional areas of land, air and naval armaments.
Above all, the American generals have developed an advanced cooperative engagement doctrine, designated by the acronym JADC2 for Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Based on the interconnection of all communication systems under the control of data fusion and massive use of artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies, this doctrine should make it possible to considerably shorten lead times and extend the capabilities of what American strategists refer to as Kill Chains, by allowing each connected system to have access to the information and means of the other systems available in the theater to respond to a threat or seize an opportunity in a timely manner particularly short, of the order of a few minutes, where it took a few hours a few years ago.
For the American forces, the JADC2 doctrine must make it possible to optimize the use of the means available in a theater of operation as much as possible, ranging from satellites to Cyber capabilities, including the forces of the 4 American corps, so as to compensate for the probable Chinese power play if applicable. However, this strategy suffers, as is also the case with the massive use of drones or the improvement of the capabilities of weapon systems or the training of forces, from a significant structural weakness, which more against which the armies Americans are poor.
Indeed, in all these areas, Beijing is developing comparable capabilities on its side, with the obvious aim of neutralizing the operational multiplier hoped for by the Americans. Thus, in the latest report on Chinese military power, published by the US Department of Defense for Congress, indicated that the PLA would be engaged on its side in the development of a doctrine comparable to the American JADC2, designated Multi-Domain Precision Warfare by Beijing.
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