Pentagon’s Taiwan war games reflect US anxiety over PLA power: defence experts
Leaked report projects heavy US losses in potential cross-strait conflict and highlights Beijing’s ability to destroy warships and planes
A recently leaked Pentagon report has projected heavy US losses should it intervene in a Taiwan conflict, highlighting Washington’s growing anxiety over Beijing’s rapidly improving capabilities, according to defence experts.
In a classified assessment known as the Overmatch brief, the Pentagon has catalogued the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships and satellites and identified the US military’s supply chain choke points, according to a December 8 opinion article by The New York Times.
The brief is a comprehensive review of US military power prepared by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and delivered most recently to top White House officials in the past year.
In war games described in the Overmatch brief, American warships such as the USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, were “often destroyed”, according to the article.