Lessons From The Recent Conflicts For Future War With China

Hoover Institution | Miles Maochun Yu

The war in Ukraine and recent Middle East conflicts demonstrate that a future military confrontation with China over Taiwan will require unprecedented stockpiles of precision-guided munitions and low-cost attritable systems. These ongoing attritional struggles reveal that modern high-intensity warfare rapidly depletes national defense reserves, exposing critical vulnerabilities in Western industrial supply chains.

To counter the People's Liberation Army's anti-access/area-denial umbrella, allied forces must transition from legacy platforms to decentralized, multi-domain networks utilizing commercial space assets and autonomous drone swarms. This operational shift demands rapid software integration and resilient, distributed command structures capable of surviving electronic warfare degradation. Ultimately, deterring a Chinese amphibious invasion hinges on pre-positioning critical ordnance in the Indo-Pacific, expanding allied manufacturing capacity to sustain a prolonged maritime and aerial campaign, and securing maritime supply lines against persistent long-range missile threats. Consequently, the United States and its regional partners must accelerate joint training and integrate defensive architectures to ensure a credible deterrent posture.

Comment

The consumption rates of precision munitions in Ukraine expose severe bottlenecks in Western industrial capacity that would critically limit operations in a Taiwan Strait conflict. Specifically, the current annual production rate of the AGM-158C LRASM remains insufficient to meet the demands of a high-intensity maritime campaign against the People's Liberation Army Navy. This supply deficit reveals that Western defence manufacturing lines lack the surge capacity required to sustain prolonged, multi-domain engagements against a peer adversary. Consequently, any protracted conflict in the Indo-Pacific would rapidly transition into an industrial war of attrition where replenishment timelines dictate operational limits.

To read in details click here