The US faces pressure to modernise and respond to China’s rapidly advancing military capabilities and ambitions, top Pentagon figures said, vowing to hasten the integration of manned and unstaffed systems to overcome a “readiness crisis” decades in the making.
Senior officials from America’s navy, marine corps, air force, space force and coastguard argued the US needed quickly to adapt and innovate amid the People’s Liberation Army’s growth, particularly given a relative shortfall in shipbuilding and other areas.
“They are certainly putting a lot of resources into the capabilities,” said General David Allvin, the US Air Force chief of staff, of the PLA, speaking on Monday at an event organised by the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank.
“Will they fight? I don’t want to find out. But they’ve got a leader who has an ambition,” he added, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. “That’s something we need to take very seriously.”
The US military saw China as “heavily funding” its military capabilities, Allvin said, with Washington eager to reach a point at which Beijing would not think of going “up against any of us”.
