The United States must take urgent action if it is to avoid a “logistical catastrophe” in any possible conflict with China, military strategists have suggested, describing supply lines as its biggest weakness.
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Decades of neglect, cost cutting and personnel shortages – as well as poor maintenance and systemic decline – have directly undermined the US deterrence strategy in the Pacific, according to an analysis published on the military website Breaking Defence.
While most public discussion focuses on advanced weapons and combat power, the deficit in the logistics network “is the weakest link in the American deterrence system”, it said.
Joint authors Eyck Freymann, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Harry Halem, a senior fellow at Yorktown Institute in Washington, argued that US military power was dependent on a long, tenuous network of ships, aircraft and supply depots that would be easily targeted by China “in the opening hours of a war”.
“Deterring China requires the US to build up not only frontline combat forces but also its logistical infrastructure,” they said in the article, which appeared on Tuesday. The alternative was that Beijing could win “before a shot is even fired”.
Beijing could force Washington into a costly, draining counter-mobilisation simply by maintaining a high state of military readiness that would wear down the US supply lines, the article said.