Admiral warns of protracted conflict with Chicoms

 The Drive:

Russia’s war in Ukraine is a “warm up” to a protracted conflict with China for the U.S., the strategic forces commander suggests.

Navy Admiral Charles A. Richard, has warned that the U.S. should anticipate, and prepare for, a protracted conflict with China in the near future – which could be triggered by further hostile actions toward Taiwan by Chinese forces. U.S. Strategic Command - one of the Defense Department's (DoD) 11 unified combatant commands in the U.S. Department of Defense - is responsible for America's nuclear triad.
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The current war in Ukraine, Richard stressed, constitutes a prelude to a “very long” conflict between China and the U.S., with the U.S. level of conventional and nuclear deterrence against the country slowly eroding.
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Overall, Richard offered a bleak assessment of America's ability to deter China militarily in the near term:

“As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking. It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they (China) are putting capability in the field faster than we are. As those curves keep going, it isn’t going to matter how good our (operating plan) is or how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are — we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem.”

China has rapidly fielded and invested in high-end military technologies and equipment over the past few years – including massive investments in its Navy, new advanced drone concepts, modernized fighter jets as well as new missiles of all types. Virtually every facet of its military has seen significant overhaul over the last decade. For some time now, U.S. defense officials have warned against the threats to regional stability and the U.S. posed by China’s accelerated weapons and technology development, which has led to the country approaching parity, if not surpassing, the U.S. in certain areas of warfare. Moreover, significant operational challenges for U.S. forces, especially in terms of logistics, would manifest themselves should a major conflict with China arise.

Of particular concern to Richard, as head of U.S. Strategic Command, is the U.S.’s ability to field effective nuclear deterrence against China – which could play a role in preventing the country from engaging in an all-out invasion of Taiwan. New nuclear threats from Russia and North Korea are “vividly illuminating what nuclear coercion looks like and how you, or how you don’t, stand up to that,” he claimed.

Richard’s assessment suggests that the U.S. not only needs to bolster its own nuclear deterrence capabilities but prepare for continued threats of the use of nuclear weapons in future conflicts by its adversaries. For example, evidence that Russian military leaders have considered using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine has alarmed U.S. officials, demonstrating that the Kremlin’s rhetoric on using nuclear weapons could be something more than mere hyperbole. Fears are also growing among U.S. officials that North Korea might be about to undertake a new nuclear test, while official U.S. reports indicate that China’s nuclear-capable ballistic missile arsenal is ballooning in size.
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There is much more.

The US has been slow to match the build-up of weapons by the Chicoms.  However, the Russian operations in Ukraine have been a disaster from Russia which appears to be exhausting much of Russia's newest conventional weapons.