As the U.S. strategic focus shifts from Europe to Asia, a new strategy to contain and comprehensively contain China is America's top priority. The Pentagon is developing a series of strategic plans to fight China in the Taiwan Strait region, but US military expert James Holmes said in an article on the US "1945" military website that if the United States wants to start a large-scale heavyweight conflict with China, it will fail miserably in this conflict, and China has found a way to defeat the United States, directly attack the US logistics supply fleet, and finally let the United States end in failure.
In China, it is difficult for the United States to find a solution to such a military attack by mastering and understanding the problems of US logistics and to give priority to attacking US logistics support operations. The U.S. military could not find a way to solve it, and as a result, the United States ran out of supplies and could only withdraw from the conflict zone, and even the western Pacific.
In modern warfare, logistics construction has increasingly become an important factor affecting the outcome of a war and an important force for winning the initiative in strategic competition. As the saying goes: Before the soldiers and horses move, the grain and grass move first, logistics support is an important part of combat effectiveness, which directly affects the course and outcome of the war, and a strong modern logistics support capability plays a decisive role in victory or defeat. U.S. military experts point out that if the U.S. military does not have sufficient and regular supplies of all kinds in the western Pacific, including strong logistical support ranging from fuel to ammunition to food, U.S. military forces can hardly complete any tasks in the western Pacific.
As for the potential strategic adversary of the United States, China is very aware of and grasps the weaknesses of the United States, and monitors and tracks the logistics fleet that delivers supplies to the US combat troops, making it a priority target. If the American military expert is the commander of the People's Liberation Army, he will also take advantage of the US logistical weakness to abandon the attack and destroy the logistical support needed by the US combat force to complete the combat mission, which is equivalent to defeating the United States in a decisive battle, and the best result is that the US logistics fleet will never reach the battlefield.
The U.S. Army deeply understands this, at least the top of the Army understands that what U.S. military experts say is correct. The chief of staff of the US Army said that the United States has problems in logistics support and intends to find a way to solve them, while emphasizing that logistics support is very important to US combat units, including the Army, for example, the Russian army is facing severe logistical challenges in the conflict, resulting in the Russian front-line combat units, facing difficulties in fuel, food and ammunition supply, forced to shrink the front, reflecting the importance of logistics support in modern warfare.
American military experts believe that logistics support is not only important, but in the most important position, quoting the Western military master Carl von Clausewitz said that the essence of war is that the concentrated strike of all forces must be directed at the center of gravity on which the enemy as a whole depends, in order to achieve victory in the battle, once the center of gravity of the battle is determined and hit it, the strategy is to hit the opponent "punch after punch" to prevent the opponent from recovering from the lost battle.
Clausewitz argued in war that the focus was on the "cohesion" of the warring side, while striking at the core of the opponent, forcing the opponent to lose cohesion, either forcing it to surrender or forcing it to be unable to continue fighting. Clausewitz emphasized that the purpose of war is to destroy the enemy, and the way to eliminate the opponent is to use force to achieve decisive battle, first of all, the target is the very important opponent legion, and secondly, the capital, which is the administrative, social and political center of the country.
China understands this better, and defeating its opponent is to force it to fight unsustainably on a large scale and lose its "cohesion" in the war. U.S. military experts point to both China's tactics and strategic goals for defeating the United States.
The first is the destruction of operational logistics, which is an indirect way to attack U.S. forces and expeditionary forces. To borrow Clausewitz, this is the main center of gravity of the United States. Because the U.S. Expeditionary Force is fighting away from the U.S. mainland, it will not be able to win without strong logistical support, and according to Chinese military doctrine, it is envisaged to launch a "system breaking war" against a powerful enemy far from the homeland, attacking supply ships, including cruise ships and transport aircraft.
If the enemy fights as a whole, such as the fleet and air force operating together, the PLA will try to discern what is the button that binds the overall combat force together, that is, "cohesion," and then attack, once China successfully breaks down the U.S. military into isolated combat forces, it can defeat the U.S. combat forces one by one.
The second is to disrupt the electromagnetic spectrum of the US military. For any modern military force, the electromagnetic spectrum is the glue between the services. According to Captain Wayne Hughes, a tactical expert in the US fleet, the decisive factors of tactics and operational effectiveness are the weapon range, reconnaissance, and command and control systems, and all the combat capabilities of modern combat forces rely on the electromagnetic spectrum, which is the means by which the PLA can master the means to detect, track and target hostile US forces at a distance.
If the PLA can disrupt the US military's use of the electromagnetic spectrum, it can achieve a "system breaking war" against the link between the US military, directly causing problems in US logistics support, and in the absence of air and sea supplies, any tactics and operations of the US military are ineffective, and the final result is to obediently withdraw.
At present, the US military lacks perfect logistics support capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region, and it is difficult to obtain timely fuel and ammunition supplies in the early stage of the war. The US Navy can put in two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Asia-Pacific region, and the combat radius of F/A-18E/F and F-35 fighters is limited to 800 kilometers, all within the strike range of China's shore-based missiles.
The US maritime logistics fleet provides military support, maneuvers at sea is very poor, is locked by the PLA space-based reconnaissance system, can easily be annihilated at sea, needs to increase the fuel storage capacity of the US military stationed in Japan at Iwakuni Naval Air Station and Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, meets the consumption of fighters and ships, and can barely maintain fuel supplies and ammunition supplies in the event of damage to sea supply lines, but it is difficult to maintain large-scale military operations.
The reality of the US military is to build high-speed mobile support ships to ensure timely delivery of ammunition for the US military, and then use the US military base operation mode to disperse combat forces in the second island chain, reduce the whole to pieces, and avoid being killed by Chinese missiles as much as possible.
All in all, logistics support is the center of gravity of the United States, if the PLA delivers round after round of heavy blows to the US logistics support fleet. For China, it can win a large-scale battle like "doomsday war" in the western Pacific without risk, and the US military in the Asia-Pacific region cannot be reinforced and ammunition supplies, and has to withdraw from the western Pacific and even the Asia-Pacific region.
From a strategic point of view, when a military conflict breaks out between the United States and China, the PLA will focus on attacking US military bases in the Asia-Pacific region, nuclear submarines and strategic bombers deployed in the Guam area, and aircraft carrier strike groups, all within the strike range of China's land-based DF-26B ballistic missiles and H-6 series bombers. Under the first round of strikes by the PLA, the US military base will cease to exist, and the US military will be destroyed in a devastating manner, and the US military will not be able to take any advantage in a conventional war.