April 9, 2025 | By David Vergun, DOD News |
China is undertaking an unprecedented military buildup, developing a large and advanced arsenal of nuclear, conventional, cyber and space capabilities, said John Noh, performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, who testified today at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington.
Continue reading “China’s Military Buildup Threatens Indo-Pacific Region Security”
By Lieutenant Commander Brian Adornato, U.S. Navy Reserve
“The Navy emphatically acknowledges the need for a larger, more lethal force.”
“We cannot manifest a bigger traditional Navy in a few short years.”
These two quotes from the Chief of Naval Operations’ (CNO’s) Navigation Plan 2024 (NavPlan 24) highlight an intractable problem for the U.S. Navy. The service does not have enough ships. It also has too little time to build more, considering Admiral Phil Davidson’s warning that 2027 will start a period of high risk for war with China—a timeline NavPlan 24 affirmed.
Continue reading ““Crash Fleet:” An Emergency Shipbuilding Program”
The American shipbuilding industry is grappling with severe problems, none perhaps more crucial than the state of the workforce, naval affairs experts said this week.
Continue reading “Fixing the US Navy’s shipbuilding problems starts with the workers, agency analysts say”
If China invaded or even merely blockaded Taiwan, would President Donald Trump deploy the U.S. military to defend the island democracy?
Given his “America First” rhetoric and a foreign policy outlook often caricatured as isolationist, many assume the answer would be no. However, such assumptions misunderstand the strategic logic underlying his approach to Taiwan and the wider Indo-Pacific.
Continue reading “Would Donald Trump Save Taiwan from China?”
By Lieutenant Colonel Thomas McCabe, U.S. Air Force Reserve (Ret.)
Before 1940, Pearl Harbor had been something of a forward base. This started to change as events drifted toward war with Japan. The United States began to build up its forces in the Philippines, then a U.S. dependency, and it implicitly made two assumptions. The first assumption was that if war came, it would primarily be in the western Pacific. Second, Hawaii was now a rear area and therefore secure. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese Navy showed these assumptions were wrong.
Could the United States be making a similar miscalculation today?
Continue reading “China Could Attack Pearl Harbor—and the West Coast”
The Philippine government is used to provocative statements from China’s state-owned media empire, but has expressed alarm at a new theory circulating on tightly-monitored Chinese social media: the newly-created concept that Palawan, one of the Philippines’ home islands, is actually part of China.
Continue reading “Philippine Gov’t is Alarmed by Claims of Chinese Sovereignty Over Palawan”
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