The war rooms of the Pentagon are lit late into the night. Across California's Mojave Desert, a brigadier general stands before bewildered civic leaders, warning them to prepare for disruption that could shatter their daily lives within years&mdash;perhaps months. In boardrooms from Maryland to Texas, defence contractors receive orders that dwarf anything seen since the Cold War's darkest hours. The message is unmistakable: <a title="US Defence" href="https://www.benefitnews24.com/defence/india-russia-to-boost-defence-ties-further/17503" target="_blank" rel="noopener">America</a> is preparing for a conflict that could reshape the global order.
This is not mere contingency planning. This is mobilisation.
Since May, the United States has embarked on an extraordinary military expansion that speaks volumes about Washington's assessment of Chinese intentions towards Taiwan. The scale is staggering: production quotas doubled, trebled, and in some cases quadrupled. Billions of dollars flowing into munitions factories. Civilian evacuation drills near military installations. The machinery of war, long dormant after decades of counterinsurgency operations, is awakening for a very different kind of fight.
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<h2 class="text-xl font-bold text-text-100 mt-1 -mb-0.5">The Edwards Warning</h2>
The scene at Edwards Air Force Base earlier this month was remarkable not for what was said, but for who said it and to whom. Brigadier General Doug Wickert, commanding the 412th Test Wing and one of America's most experienced test pilots, summoned local civic leaders to deliver an unusually blunt warning: if China attacks Taiwan in the coming years, residents living near the base&mdash;and indeed anywhere within range of Chinese weapons&mdash;should expect "potentially massive disruption from the very start."
This wasn't a classified briefing. The Air Force shared it on social media and promoted it through press releases. The message was meant to be heard&mdash;by local communities, certainly, but perhaps more importantly by Beijing. The subtext is clear: America is not merely contemplating intervention; it is preparing its citizens for war.
Senior officials have repeatedly stated their assessment that Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the People's Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Whilst no decision to attack appears imminent, the timeline is uncomfortably close. Military readiness takes years to achieve; if Washington believes 2027 is the danger point, then 2025 is precisely when preparation must reach fever pitch.
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<h2 class="text-xl font-bold text-text-100 mt-1 -mb-0.5">The Munitions Imperative</h2>
At the heart of America's response lies a sobering recognition: the Pentagon doesn't have enough missiles.
The revelation emerged from hard experience. Ukraine's defence against Russia exposed critical vulnerabilities in Western stockpiles and supply chains. Then came the brief but intense confrontation with Iran this summer&mdash;characterised by some as a "12-day war"&mdash;during which the United States and Israel expended hundreds of advanced interceptors. Patriot batteries, those workhorses of air defence, fired round after round. Inventories, already strained by Ukrainian demands, plummeted further.
China has been watching. Beijing has drawn its own conclusions about Western munitions shortfalls, about production bottlenecks, about the fragility of just-in-time manufacturing applied to weapons of war. The People's Liberation Army has spent two decades building massive missile arsenals&mdash;thousands of weapons designed explicitly to keep American carriers at bay and pummel Taiwanese defences. If Washington cannot sustain a missile exchange, deterrence collapses.
Enter the Munitions Acceleration Council, a newly created body led by Deputy Defence Secretary Steve Feinberg. Following intensive meetings with industry leaders in June, the Council delivered its verdict: production must increase between two and four times current rates across approximately a dozen critical systems.
The shopping list reads like an inventory of modern warfare: Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptors, Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM), Standard Missile-6, Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM), Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM). Each represents a specific capability crucial to a Pacific conflict. PAC-3 missiles defend against ballistic threats. LRASMs sink ships from standoff range. PrSMs strike deep into enemy territory. Together, they form the toolkit for confronting a near-peer adversary across vast ocean distances.
Patriot interceptors remain the most critical bottleneck. In September, the Army awarded Lockheed Martin nearly $10 billion for approximately 2,000 PAC-3 rounds through 2026. Officials now want that volume produced annually&mdash;a four-fold increase from current output. By 2027, annual production is projected to reach 650 interceptors, with Lockheed increasing output by over 30 per cent in 2024 and another 20 per cent in 2025.
In August, the Air Force issued contracts worth $7.8 billion to boost stockpiles. The largest award&mdash;$4.3 billion to Lockheed Martin&mdash;covers JASSM and LRASM production across multiple lots, including foreign military sales to Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, and Poland. Current annual production sits at approximately 500 missiles combined; the goal is to double that to 1,000. The manufacturer is simultaneously expanding the roster of aircraft capable of launching LRASMs, currently limited to Air Force B-1 Lancer bombers and Navy F-18 Super Hornets.
For Precision Strike Missiles, the trajectory is equally ambitious. Initial low-rate production stood at 110 missiles in 2022. By 2025, output is set to reach 400 annually&mdash;nearly a four-fold increase.
<h2 class="text-xl font-bold text-text-100 mt-1 -mb-0.5">Why Taiwan Matters</h2>
To understand why Washington is willing to risk great power conflict over a self-governing island of 24 million people, one must grasp three interlocking imperatives: strategic, economic, and credibility.
Strategically, Taiwan sits at the heart of the First Island Chain, that arc of territory running from Japan through the Philippines to the South China Sea. If China controls Taiwan, it breaks out into the Pacific. The island's eastern coastline faces the deep waters of the Philippine Sea; from there, Chinese submarines and surface combatants could operate freely, threatening everything from Tokyo to Sydney. American military dominance in the Pacific, the cornerstone of regional security architecture since 1945, would be fundamentally challenged.
Economically, Taiwan represents something far more critical than its modest size suggests: it is the beating heart of the global semiconductor industry. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) alone produces over 90 per cent of the world's most advanced chips&mdash;the 3-nanometre and 2-nanometre processors that power everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence systems to advanced weapons. TSMC has announced plans to invest an additional $100 billion in the United States, expanding its Arizona operations with three new fabrication facilities, but most of TSMC's capacity remains in Taiwan. A Chinese conquest would hand Beijing effective control over the technology that underpins modern civilisation. It would be economic strangulation through semiconductor monopoly.
This is why Taiwan's "silicon shield" has been so potent&mdash;and why TSMC's expanding American investments raise concerns that its leverage in securing protection may be weakened. The island has been indispensable; the question is whether it remains so as advanced fabrication capabilities gradually migrate to Arizona, though that process will take years, perhaps decades.
Finally, there is credibility. America's alliance system in Asia&mdash;encompassing Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and increasingly India&mdash;rests on confidence that Washington will honour its commitments. If China takes Taiwan whilst America stands aside, every treaty ally will question whether American security guarantees are worth the paper they're printed on. Tokyo would likely nuclearise within a decade. Seoul might accommodate Beijing. The entire post-war order in Asia would unravel.
Washington has maintained "strategic ambiguity" about whether it would defend Taiwan militarily, but recent years have seen that ambiguity erode. Presidents and senior officials have repeatedly suggested America would intervene. Now, actions speak louder than diplomatic formulations: you don't quadruple missile production for contingencies you plan to avoid.
<h2 class="text-xl font-bold text-text-100 mt-1 -mb-0.5">The Chinese Calculus</h2>
Intelligence assessments indicate China is rapidly building up its commercial ferry fleet in preparation for potential invasion operations&mdash;a telling indicator that Beijing is marshalling the logistics for amphibious assault. The People's Liberation Army has transformed over two decades from a vast, poorly-equipped conscript force into a modern military with capabilities approaching American standards in several domains. China now possesses the world's largest navy by hull count, a sophisticated missile arsenal, rapidly improving air and space capabilities, and growing expertise in cyber and electronic warfare.
Xi Jinping has made reunification with Taiwan a cornerstone of his legitimacy and legacy. As he consolidates power into an unprecedented third term and likely beyond, the pressure to act grows. Congressional committees have warned that the window to deter conflict is closing fast, suggesting American assessments are increasingly pessimistic about preventing confrontation through deterrence alone.
Yet Beijing faces its own dilemmas. An invasion of Taiwan would be among the most complex military operations ever attempted&mdash;a contested amphibious assault across 100 miles of rough water against a defender armed with modern weapons and fighting for survival. Even if successful, occupying a hostile island of 24 million people would be a nightmare. And then there's the American factor: if Washington intervenes, China risks catastrophic defeat.
This is why the munitions build-up matters so profoundly. It signals to Beijing that America is not merely posturing but materially preparing for sustained high-intensity conflict. It narrows Xi's window of perceived opportunity, forcing Chinese planners to contemplate not just initial combat but a protracted war of attrition against an opponent whose industrial base, while rusty, can still outproduce anyone given time and will.
<h2 class="text-xl font-bold text-text-100 mt-1 -mb-0.5">The Fragile Supply Chain</h2>
Former Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante warned in 2023 that Ukraine exposed fundamental weaknesses: fragile supply chains, idle production lines, insufficient stockpiles. The American defence industrial base had optimised for efficiency and profit over decades of peace and counterinsurgency, not for the voracious demands of peer conflict. One cannot surge production of sophisticated missiles as easily as stamping out rifles; precision-guided munitions require specialised components, often from single sources, with production processes measured in months.
Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll acknowledged this month the military is planning "massively substantive changes to how we buy our stuff." The old model&mdash;small annual lots, drawn-out competitions, byzantine regulations&mdash;cannot meet the demands of potential Pacific war. Early questionnaires to industry asked how companies would scale to roughly 2.5 times current output within six, 18, and 24 months, and whether they could tap private capital or license technology to second-source producers to break bottlenecks.
This represents nothing less than an attempt to partially remilitarise the American economy, not through nationalisation but through massive government orders that make expansion profitable and urgent. It is a recognition that deterrence requires not just capable platforms but deep magazines&mdash;the ability to fight and sustain combat against an opponent who will not collapse after a few precise strikes.
<h2 class="text-xl font-bold text-text-100 mt-1 -mb-0.5">The Stakes</h2>
If conflict comes, it will be unlike anything the world has witnessed since 1945. Two nuclear-armed great powers, with economies totalling over $40 trillion, clashing across the world's most vital trading routes. The human cost would be catastrophic. Taiwan's cities could be devastated. Chinese coastal metropolises would come under attack. American casualties could exceed all post-Vietnam conflicts combined within days. The global economy would face disruption making the pandemic and financial crisis look mild by comparison&mdash;supply chains shattered, markets in freefall, energy prices soaring.
Yet the alternative&mdash;allowing China to seize Taiwan through intimidation or force whilst the West watches&mdash;carries its own costs. It would represent the most significant geopolitical defeat for the United States since Vietnam, with far more profound consequences. The question is not whether Taiwan matters, but whether it matters enough to risk war.
The Americans are answering that question through their actions. They are buying missiles by the thousand, warning civilians to prepare for conflict, and rebuilding the industrial sinews required for great power war. This is not sabre-rattling. This is the deliberate, methodical, and increasingly public preparation for a conflict that could define the 21st century as surely as the world wars shaped the 20th.
Whether deterrence succeeds or fails may well be determined in the next 18 to 24 months&mdash;the same timeframe the Pentagon has given contractors to surge production. Xi Jinping is watching those factories as closely as American planners. The race is not just to produce missiles but to produce enough of them, visibly enough, to convince Beijing that the cost of taking Taiwan exceeds any possible benefit.
The question that haunts Pentagon planners, Congressional committees, and allied capitals is whether they can manufacture deterrence faster than China can manufacture resolve. The answer will shape not just Taiwan's fate, but the global order for generations to come.
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September 30, 2025 | 16:25 IST