Thu, May 22, 2025 page2

• China’s drills are invasion rehearsals: US admiral

  ‘RISK CALCULUS’: Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, is known for coining the term ‘Hellscape’ strategy to defend an invasion of Taiwan

  • Staff writer, with CNA
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  The head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo, has warned that on-and-off Chinese military exercises around Taiwan are not drills, but “rehearsals” for a potential invasion and that China is on “a dangerous course.”

  A Wall Street Journal article published on Tuesday reported on an event in Hawaii “attended by the US and more than two dozen allies to sharpen their ability to jointly fight against Beijing.”

  One of the speakers was Paparo, a four-star admiral who oversees US forces in the Indo-Pacific region, who laid out a scenario of how to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan after warning that “China is on a dangerous course” and that its large-scale drills around Taiwan were “rehearsals, not exercises,” the Journal reported.

  

  Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, speaks at a news conference at the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio, Philippines, on Aug. 29 last year.

  Photo: AP

  He said the key to an initial stage of a US-China showdown over Taiwan would be “to neutralize China’s radar sites, missile launchers and command centers that hold off the US and its allies,” the Journal said.

  China has several types of anti-ship missiles, a sizeable lead in advanced hypersonic weaponry and an edge in its proximity to Taiwan, but the addition of US precision-strike missiles that can sink ships is a “game changer” that “alters China’s risk calculus,” Paparo was cited as saying.

  “So, too, do a pair of agile forces working closely with US allies near Taiwan that can hit Chinese targets from land, collect valuable battle space information, and create openings for US air and naval forces to maneuver,” he was cited as saying.

  Paparo is known for coining the term “Hellscape” strategy to defend a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

  He first used the term during a conference in June last year and reiterated it during a US congressional hearing in Washington last month.

  The strategy is that as soon as Chinese forces begin moving across the Taiwan Strait, allied forces would deploy numerous uncrewed submarines, uncrewed surface ships and aerial drones to prevent the advancement of troops.

  China has conducted more extensive military drills, including in areas surrounding Taiwan, since its response to then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022.

  The most recent large-scale exercises were the two-day “Strait Thunder-2025A” drills last month in parts of the Taiwan Strait conducted by the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command.

  These exercises were to serve as “a stern warning” to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said.

  Also on Tuesday, US Representative Zach Nunn posted on social media a clip of an interview he did with Falun Gong-affiliated New Tang Dynasty Television on his recent discussion with Paparo on what the US would do should China invade Taiwan.

  Nunn said in the interview that as 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors are produced in Taiwan, a decision by China to embargo, blockade or outright invade Taiwan could result in “economic destruction that would rot over the entire world.”

  “We’re talking about things we haven’t seen since World War II, economic GDP collapses. No one wants to see this happen, including the American people, or candidly, the Chinese people,” Nunn said. “So we need to have a real-world assessment of what needs to happen.”

  During his recent meeting with Paparo, Nunn said he was told that Washington has a “minute-by-minute approach to how to deter, how to stop and how to respond if a Chinese incursion was made in a military sense, upon the island of Taiwan,” but offered no details.
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