US reinforces military supplies in Pacific to fend off PLA attack on Taiwan: top officer

Joint chiefs chairman Charles Brown says conflict not inevitable but if it happens, it will be more like WWII and less like wars in the past 30 years

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Air Force General Charles Brown says war with China is not inevitable but the US is confident of winning such a conflict if it broke out. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 8:00pm, 24 Jul 2024Updated: 8:02pm, 24 Jul 2024

The United States is bolstering its military logistics to offset expected rapid PLA responses to a conflict involving Taiwan, a senior US military official said.

Air Force General Charles Brown, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a US forum on Friday that the integrated use of advanced technology would differentiate Washington’s “state of warfare” with Beijing in a Taiwan Strait conflict from that over the past three decades.

Conflict with China was not “imminent or inevitable”, Brown said, but if it did happen, the clash would be “akin to what we saw in World War II”.

“The thing that I’ve seen over the past several years is the character of warfare has changed … When you look at the technology and you look at the use of drones, you look at the use of cyber, all these other factors come into play,” Brown said at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

“It may not be the high-end capability that we are using but a mix of capability that can create a greater defence of Taiwan.”

To that end, the US was accelerating efforts to build up its military logistics in the Pacific, stockpiling weapons, ammunition, supplies and other military support to be combat ready, he said.

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