War with China ‘would result in large-scale casualties,’ Army general says

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The number of casualties the U.S. military would suffer in a war against China could be unlike anything it has experienced during the post-9/11 wars, said Lt. Gen. Joel “JB” Vowell, deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Pacific.Our assumptions for planning is that casualty estimates will be much higher than you might have seen or witnessed as part of the Global War on Terror between Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where there are very small numbers, relatively in contacts who were who were killed and injured, as compared to large-scale combat operations,” Vowell recently told reporters. “A potential conflict with the People’s Republic of China likely would result in large-scale casualties.”

China has a growing arsenal of hypersonic missiles and other advanced weapons that could pose a major threat to U.S. ships, including aircraft carriers, which can have a crew of up to 5,000 sailors and Marines.Those potential casualties are there, so we have to calculate that mass casualty event,” Vowell told reporters at a July 22 Defense Writers Group event, which is based at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Email addressSign UpThe Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, has conducted 50 war games in recent years looking at a possible Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan that estimated between 9,500 to 21,000 U.S. troops would be killed and wounded, and that the American military would lose dozens of ships and hundreds of planes, said retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, a senior advisor with the think tank.

The reason the casualty numbers are not higher is the scenarios did not envision U.S. troops being involved in ground combat, Cancian told Task & Purpose. Taiwanese ground forces fought Chinese troops in these wargames.U.S. casualties would likely run higher if American ground troops were tasked with defending Taiwan or recapturing lost allied territories, such as Matsu and Kinmen islands, which are governed by Taiwan, he said.