US military plays catch-up in logistics as it prepares for Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Washington — When US and Australian troops practised amphibious landings, ground combat and air operations last summer, they drew headlines about the allies’ deepening defence co-operation to counter China’s growing military ambitions.

But for US war planners preparing for a potential conflict over Taiwan, the high-profile Talisman Sabre exercises had a far more discreet value: it helped create new stockpiles of military equipment that were left behind in Australia after the drills ended in August, US officials said.

The US and its allies are increasingly worried that in the coming years Chinese President Xi Jinping could order his military to seize Taiwan, the democratically governed island China considers its own territory. So, the US military is taking a hard look at its own military readiness and trying to play catch-up in a critical area: its logistics network.

The equipment from Talisman Sabre included about 330 vehicles and trailers and 130 containers in warehouses in Bandiana, southeastern Australia, the Army says.

The amount of equipment, which has not been previously reported, is enough to supply about three logistics companies, with as many as 500 or more soldiers, focused on ensuring supplies reach war fighters.

It is the kind of materiel that is needed for a future drill, a natural disaster, or in a war.

“We are looking to do this more and more,” said Army Gen Charles Flynn, the top Army commander in the Pacific.

“There’s a number of other countries in the region where we already have agreements to do that,” he added, without naming specific countries.

Reuters interviews with more than two dozen current and former US officials shows that American military logistics in the Pacific is one of the greatest US vulnerabilities in any potential conflict over Taiwan.

Spread hubs

US war games have concluded that China is likely to try to bomb jet fuel supplies or refuelling ships, crippling US air and sea power without having to battle heavily armed fighter jets or sink America’s fleet of surface warships, according to experts.

In response, the US is trying to spread its military logistics hubs across the region — including warehouses in Australia, officials said.

Asked about Reuters’ conclusions, the Pentagon said that the department of defence is working with allies to make US forces more mobile and distributed.

But critics say Washington’s network is still too concentrated and that the government hasn’t put enough money or urgency towards the effort.

“When you really dig down a couple of layers, the intel community is blinking red as far as for the next five years. And yet some of these timelines [to address the risks] are 10, 15, 20 years long,” said congressman Mike Waltz, a Republican who leads the House subcommittee overseeing military logistics and readiness.

“There’s a mismatch there.”

The US military’s logistics arm, US Transportation Command (TransCom), has had a major success: funnelling more than 300-million kilogram of equipment and more than 2-million rounds of artillery to the Ukrainian military in its war with Russia.

Supporting Taiwan, about 160km from the coast of China, would be orders of magnitude harder, US officials and experts acknowledge.

The US has not formally said it would intervene if China were to attack Taiwan but President Joe Biden has repeatedly suggested he would deploy US troops to defend the island.

Ammunition supplies

Xi has ordered his military to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027. But many analysts see that as an attempt to galvanise his military rather than a timeline for invasion.

A senior US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said supplies of ammunition are at the top of the list of priorities in the Indo-Pacific, followed by fuel, food and spare parts for equipment.

“If we run out of the things to shoot ... that’s going to be an immediate problem,” the official said, adding planning for a Taiwan contingency is already well under way.

US officials warn that in a major conflict Navy ships could quickly run out of missile defences.

In a war game run for Congress in April, China prepared for an amphibious assault on Taiwan with huge air and missile strikes against US bases in the region. That included the US naval base on the Japanese island of Okinawa and the Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo.

The potential impact of attacks on US logistics hubs, refuelling ships and aerial refuelling tankers, is a “wake-up call” for many legislators, said Becca Wasser at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think-tank, which ran the war game.

“China is going to purposely go after some of the logistics nodes to make it difficult for the US to sustain operations in the Indo-Pacific,” Wasser said.

To address such vulnerabilities, the US military is looking to places such as Australia as more secure locations to stockpile equipment, even as it expands co-operation with the Philippines, Japan and other partners in the Pacific.

The Biden administration announced in July the US would also create an interim logistics centre in Bandiana, Australia, with the aim of eventually creating an “enduring logistics support area” in Queensland.

According to an internal US military document seen by Reuters, the facilities in Bandiana could hold more than 300 vehicles and had 800 pallet positions.

Leave equipment

In July, the US Air Force carried out Mobility Guardian 23, an exercise in the Indo-Pacific with Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK, that included practising air refuelling and medical evacuations.

The military used the opportunity to leave behind equipment, including in Guam. That gear helped forces there deal with fallout from the recent Typhoon Mawar but would also be useful in any future conflict, said Air Force Maj-Gen Darren Cole, the director of operations at Air Mobility Command.

Cole noted his command is responsible not just for disaster relief but contingencies “all the way up to full combat operations, full scale major war”.

There has been a shift in the US military’s thinking. For decades, the US has not had to worry about a foreign power targeting its logistics bases. That allowed planners to focus on efficiency, adopting the “just-in-time” logistics model common among private-sector manufacturers.

That approach led to the cost-saving decision to create megabases, such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany, which is safe from Taliban and Islamic State attacks.

But a conflict with China could make megabases, which include Camp Humphreys near Seoul, prime targets. This risk is prompting the switch to a more costly approach to logistics that includes dispersing US stockpiles and prepositioning supplies around the region.

“Instead of planning for efficiency, you probably [need] to plan for effectiveness, and move from ‘just in time’ to ‘just in case’,” said R-Adm Dion English, one of the Pentagon’s top logistics officers.

The US did this in Europe after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, pre-positioning stocks and investing in bases and airfields that deploying US troops could use if needed. In the five years leading up to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon requested $11.65bn in funding from Congress to preposition equipment in Europe.

By contrast, a Reuters analysis of the Pentagon’s budget request found that the military plans to only ask for $2.5bn from fiscal year 2023 to 2027 to preposition equipment and fuel and improve logistics in Asia. The Pentagon has an annual budget of about $842bn.

Another costly problem is the ageing fleet of US transport ships. The average age of the ships designed to carry heavy cargo, such as tanks, into a conflict zone is 44 years with some older than 50 years.

One blistering analysis by CNAS concluded: “The department of defence has systematically underinvested in logistics in terms of money, mental energy, physical assets and personnel.”

Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate armed services committee, said the Pentagon and Congress need far more focus on Pacific bases and logistics.

“Our ability to deter conflict in the Western Pacific over the next five years is not close to where it needs to be,” he said.

Reuters