President Joe Biden’s national security adviser warned that the United States could quickly run out of munitions if a war with China broke out.
“God forbid we end up in a full-scale war with the PRC,” Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event, referencing the People’s Republic of China. “But any war with a country like the PRC, a military like the PRC, is going to involve the exhaustion of munition stockpiles very rapidly.”
U.S. defense officials believe the PRC is the country’s biggest threat, and with its rapid military modernization and expansion, there have been questions about whether the U.S. would be ready for a conflict in the Pacific. Chinese leaders have said they want their military to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027, though U.S. defense leaders have said the date does not guarantee a decision to carry out such an operation has been made.
Sullivan warned that the U.S. needs to be “stockpiling both the vital munitions we know we’ll need in sufficient quantities and the components needed to produce them on short notice.” While he said the U.S. “is uniquely capable of” evolving and adapting, he acknowledged that China has “the single biggest advantage,” which he said was “the sheer scope and scale of production,” and insisted the U.S. has to “close the gap.”
The concern has also been highlighted by the U.S.’s continued military support for Israel and Ukraine.
Adm. Samuel Paparo, the U.S. Navy’s top commander in the Indo-Pacific, warned last month that the Pentagon’s decision to provide Ukraine with artillery pieces and short-range weapons didn’t initially have a significant impact on relevant stockpiles but that the systems the U.S. has provided to Ukraine, as well as Israel, more recently has had an effect.
The U.S. has sent Kyiv at least two Patriot systems and deployed a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, one out of the six in its arsenal, to Israel.
“Up to this year, where most of the employment of weapons were really artillery pieces and short-range weapons, I had said, ‘Not at all,’ but now, with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed, it’s now eating into stocks,” Paparo added. “And to say otherwise would be dishonest.”
The subject of munition stockpiles has become a major topic of attention due to the Pentagon’s continued support for Ukraine in a war that has spanned nearly three years. The U.S. has also continued to provide billions of dollars of aid to Israel as it faces threats from enemies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, all of whom have Iran’s backing.
Sullivan acknowledged on Wednesday that over an eight-week period in 2022, Ukraine used a year’s worth of U.S. 155-millimeter artillery. He said the U.S. industrial base, during a stretch, was only able to increase production about 400 rounds a month, “enough for Ukraine to fend itself for a few extra hours.”
“The deeper we looked, the clearer it became that we needed larger stocks, many critical munitions and weapons platforms, both to maintain U.S. readiness and to equip a partner under attack,” Sullivan explained.
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By the time the new administration is inaugurated on Jan. 20, the defense industrial base will be producing 55,000 155-millimeter artillery rounds a month, and by early 2026, that should extend to 100,000 monthly.
In addition to the threat of a conflict with Beijing, Sullivan noted that over the last couple of years, the U.S. has seen deepening military ties between China and adversaries such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Sullivan said it could be more than a decade before the U.S. is in a place to “breathe a sigh of relief.”