Since 2018, the American armed forces have made Confrontation, with the Chinese Navy and the People's Liberation Army, the pivot of their military and industrial strategy, whether naval, air or land programs.
This hypothesis gained considerable momentum when in March 2021, Admiral Phil Davidson, then American commander of the Indo-Pacific theater, declared that Beijing and its armed forces would be able to to attack Taiwan, from 2027.
This date, which had not been detailed by Admiral Davidson, has since become the deadline at the heart of the effort to modernize the American armed forces, in particular for the US Navy, the US Air Force and the US Marines Corps, the most concerned by the hypothesis of a conflict with the People's Liberation Army.
And for good reason ! There is nothing arbitrary about this date. It is, in fact, from 2027 that the Chinese Navy will have the numerical advantage over the US Navy, in a scenario of blockade or amphibious assault on Taiwan.
In this section:
2027, a key deadline for the Pentagon regarding Taiwan
Since Admiral Davidson's declarations, the 2027 deadline has thus emerged as the pivotal date for many American defense programs, whether it concerns the modernization and expansion of the production capacities of American shipyards, as well as the entry into service of numerous drone programs, lurking munitions and hypersonic missiles for all American forces. .
In this regard, it should be noted that in the words of Admiral Davidson, since confirmed by several analyzes emanating from different Think Tanks across the Atlantic, 2027 does not represent the most probable anticipated date for Chinese military action. against Taiwan, but the beginning of a period during which China would have sufficient relative military capabilities to consider itself able to carry out such action against the autonomous island.
It is therefore from this deadline that the trajectories of modernization of the countries' armed forces will have the greatest influence on the balance of forces around Taiwan, first, then in the entire Indo-Pacific basin, after that.
We understand, in this context, the reasons leading, for example, to the US Navy postponing certain major programs to modernize its forces, such as the DDG(x) destroyer, the SSN(x) nuclear attack submarine. , And the F/A-XX embarked fighter plane, to free up budgetary resources in the short term, in order to best manage the evolution of the subtle changes in the balance of power with the PLA, from 2026 to 2040.
More recently, the US Air Force announced questioning the paradigms surrounding the NGAD program of 6th generation fighter, planned so far to enter service from 2030, in part to give priority to the CCA combat drone program, at a much closer deadline, and considered, rightly, as the key to balance of power against China, including in the short term.
Evolution of the US Navy and Chinese Navy fleets until 2040
To understand the reasons that led Admiral Davidson, and the think tanks after him, to consider the year 2027 as the beginning of a high-risk phase, around the Taiwan question and the possibility of a confrontation Sino-American in the Pacific, it is appropriate to study the evolution of the balance of military power between these two superpowers around and after this date.
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In any case, this conflict will be resolved through economics and not through war.
With China on the brink of the abyss and surviving only through its external trade balance, how will it survive trade countermeasures?
We are already seeing the damage from electric car penalties so large-scale measures……
You should be wary of this type of prediction. We must therefore remember those who predicted the rapid economic collapse of Russia in March 2022. Even if the Russian economy is doing much worse than official reports from Moscow claim, I do not see any influence on politics led by the Kremlin, nor on a possible turn of the population against V. Putin. On the contrary, the control over minds seems to have strengthened over the last two years. And it could be the same in China, which also has a comfortable carpet of currencies and reserves of materials that are much more difficult to circumvent than Russian oil and gas….
Excellent analysis, thank you. Two other things to think about:
1. In the event of a blockade of Taiwan followed by direct intervention by the United States, the conventional balance of power would not in fact be favorable, and the risks cannot really be controlled. The United States would thus be tempted by a conventional escalation in the Pacific to try to restore the balance of power by using the capability elements in their favor and by dispersing the Chinese forces. Furthermore, China is obviously a nuclear-armed country, and the risks of nuclear escalation would be high. Will the United States want to take this risk for a small island on the other side of the Pacific?
2. If they decided to make this choice despite everything, they would be condemned to make the decision quickly. At this stage, Chinese industry is infinitely more powerful than American industry (China represents 60% of global shipbuilding capacity), its civilian industry can switch to war mode quite quickly. On the other hand, we know the difficulties of the American naval industry. In short, in this second Pacific war, it is no longer the United States that has the industrial capabilities to win, and China would be sure to win a war of attrition.
For a small island in the Pacific, probably not. Moreover, with the shift of 1970, which allowed the ousting of Taiwan from the UN in favor of the PRC, the United States had already indicated that its resolution to defend Taiwan was entirely relative. Since then, however, the island has become the global hub for semiconductors, with 60% of global market share. If Beijing gets its hands on it, already controlling 80% of the world's refined rare earths, China will have almost total control over the industrial and technological capacities of the vast majority of industrialized countries. As long as additional skills and industrial capacities have not been deployed in the West, I have little doubt about Washington's desire to maintain the status quo, and to prevent Beijing from getting its hands on the island. Afterwards, on the other hand….