The US commanders who plan a possible conflict with China are increasingly worried that the Pentagon will soon have to move long-range precision weapons from the stocks in the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East, say Congress officials.
This is due to the large amount of ammunition that the United States are using in a bombing campaign in Yemen ordered by President Trump.
The readiness of the United States in the Pacific is also injured by the deployment of the Pentagon of war ships and planes in the Middle East after the Israel-Gaza war began in October 2023 and after the forces of the Houthi militia in the Yemen started to attack the ships in the Red Sea to support the Palestinians, say the officials.
American ships and planes, as well as the members of the service that work there, are pushed to what the military calls a high operational rhythm. The maintenance of basic equipment also becomes a problem in such grinding conditions.
The officials of the congress who spoke of the problems did it on condition of anonymity to speak candidly on sensitive military issues.
The Amm. Samuel Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command of the Pentagon from May, will almost certainly be asked for questions of readiness when it should testify before the congress on Wednesday and Thursday.
Several Trump assistants, including the defense secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby, the subsoil for politics, have said that the United States must give priority to strengthening his forces in the Asia-Pacific region to dissuade China, which is quickly building its military and its nuclear arsenal.
Those officials argue that support for United States arms to Ukraine in his defense against Russia and decades of military campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan have removed important resources from Asia. If Israel attacks the Iran nuclear enrichment sites in the coming months and turns on an Middle East war, the Trump administration would almost certainly have committed to several US military resources in the region.
But the US military fought to balance resources as bombs the Houthi militants supported by Iran in Yemen.
The New York Times reported last week that the one -month bombing campaign was much larger than the Pentagon had publicly revealed. The Pentagon exhausted about $ 200 million only in the first three weeks, the US officials said. The costs are much higher – well over $ 1 billion at this point – when operating and staff expenses are taken into consideration, they added.
The Pentagon has deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 invisible bombers and combat jets, as well as defenses Air Patriot and Thaad in the Middle East. The B-2 bombers make long runs from the small island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where the American and British military have a base.
On April 1st, Sean Parnell, spokesman for the Pentagon, said that the carrier carl Vinson and his spare ships were withdrawn from the Pacific for missions in the Middle East.
On Friday, Mr. Trump released an aerial video on social media who seemed to show a bomb or a missile attack on dozens of people. The president said the attack was on Houthi fighters. “Oops, there will be no attack from these Houthi!” He wrote.
But the Pentagon officials said allied counterparties, legislators and their closed briefing helpers according to which the American army had only a limited success in destroying the vast arsenal of missiles, drones and houthis launchers.
A high officer of the Department of Defense recently declared to the helpers of the congress that the Navy and the Indo-Pacific Command were “very worried” on the speed with which the military were burning through the ammunition in Yemen, said a congress official.
The overall stocks of the Navy were already well below the target objectives before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ordered the US military for the first time to attack the Houthi a year and a half ago to try to stop their assaults on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The elderly defense official referred to the helper of the congress that the Pentagon was now “risking real operational problems” in the event of a breakout of any conflict in Asia, said a congress official.
In response to questions that the US war plans in the Pacific can suffer from the lack of available ammunition, a spokesperson for the admiral Paparo seemed to minimize concerns.
“The American army offers flexible deterrence options to protect US national interests among the fighters commands,” said the spokesperson, Cmrr. Matthew Comer, “while always maintaining a prompt, capable and lethal force in the Indus of Pacific to provide for national defense and respond to any contingency”.
During a trip to Asia two weeks ago, Mr. Hegseth tried to reassure the allies that the United States undertake to dissuade China’s “threats” in the region.
Mr. Hegseth said to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, that the Trump administration “would have truly gave priority and would have moved to this region of the world in an unprecedented way”.
“Today are the Philippines. Tomorrow, it is Japan. It will be Australia and South Korea and other nations in this part of the world,” he said, where, together, we will establish the deterrence necessary to prevent war “.
The long -range weapons used in the Yemen campaign include Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships; a type of glide bomb called agm-154 joint stall weapon; And the furtive missile air-air-superficiest junction Missile AGM-158, affirm US officials. These are also exactly the types of weapons that American war planners say that they would be necessary to counter an air and naval assault by the Chinese popular liberation army in the South and Eastern China and in the Pacific.
Weapons are in stocks in the US military bases on Guam; in Okinawa, Japan; And elsewhere along the western Pacific, the officials say. The Pentagon has not yet had to immerse himself in those stocks to fight the Houthi, but he may have to do it soon, they say.
American manufacturing Tomahawk missiles are also increasingly important for Japan’s military needs. The Japanese Ministry of Defense in January 2024 signed an agreement with the United States to purchase 400 Tomahawk missiles. American commanders expect Japan, an ally treated of the United States, can use missiles to help US forces in the event of war with China.
Biden has strengthened military relations and sales of weapons with Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia to try to dissuade China to undertake any aggressive military action, in particular against Taiwan, the independent island in fact that the Chinese Communist Party aims to bring under its domain.
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, spoke of the need for China to check Taiwan, but did not publicly declare an explicit time sequence to do it. Mr. Trump was opposed to what he would do if China tried to invade or block Taiwan. Elon Musk, Trump’s billionaire councilor, said that Taiwan should be under the control of China, while the secretary of state Marco Rubio said that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo.
Biden repeatedly said that the American army would defend Taiwan from a great attack by China.
Taiwan remains the largest flash point in the US-China relationships and the most probable trigger point for an armed conflict between the two nuclear superpowers.
John Ismail Contributed relationships.