China’s military exercises around Taiwan have become so extensive they could be used as a “fig leaf” to mask an invasion, the Financial Times quoted the top US commander in the Indo-Pacific region as saying.
Speaking at the Honolulu Defense Forum on Thursday, US Navy Admiral Samuel Paparo sounded the alarm over the rising alliance of China, Russia and North Korea, calling it an “emerging axis of autocracy.”
The trio have formed a “triangle of troublemakers,” he told the Pacific Forum-sponsored event.
Photo: AFP
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) surge of activities around Taiwan in the past few years had made it difficult to distinguish a large-scale exercise and preparations for an invasion, Paparo was quoted as saying.
“We’re very close to that [point] where on a daily basis the fig leaf of an exercise could very well hide operational warning,” he said. “Their aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan right now are not exercises as they call them, they are rehearsals. They are rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan to the mainland.”
US intelligence indicates that China, Russia and North Korea’s cooperation has extended to coordinating “everything from bomber patrols that penetrate American ADIZ [air defense identification zones] to shared anti-satellite capabilities and advanced submarine technologies from the seabed to the heavens,” the paper quoted Paparo as saying.
Expressing concern over the rise in PLA activity, Paparo said that the US must move quickly to close capability gaps, including the quantity of stockpiled arms that could be used in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Our magazines run low. Our maintenance backlogs grow longer each month... We operate on increasingly thin margins for error,” he was quoted as saying. “Our opponents see these gaps, and they are moving aggressively to exploit them.”
Paparo, who recently hosted a summit on artificial intelligence (AI), said the US should move quickly to obtain and deploy more types of uncrewed weapons systems, as AI could be a “key tool” to help the US detect early signs of a pending attack on Taiwan.
The commander called for urgent reforms at the Pentagon’s procurement system, saying: “Technology alone is not going to win this fight.”
“Procurement at the speed of combat, not at the speed of committees,” he added.
In related news, the Japanese Ministry of Defense told Nikkei that the PLA Navy last year sailed 68 times into Japan’s southwestern seas, three times the frequency of regional Chinese military activity from 2021.
Speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference, Japanese Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani said that the number included all ship movements Tokyo had positively identified as Chinese military.
Last year also marked the first time Chinese military aircraft entered Japanese airspace and the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning’s (遼寧) first-ever navigation near the boundary of Japanese territorial waters, he said.
These incidents were highly concerning and posed an unprecedentedly severe strategic challenge to the rules-based international order, he said.
Japan would conduct surveillance and take other necessary measures in the sea and air surrounding Japan to ensure nothing can go awry and respond to incidents with calm determination, he was cited as saying.
Additional reporting by CNA
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