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The military exercises of China around Taiwan have become so extensive that they can soon be used as a “fig leaf” to hide an attack on the island, according to the US high military commander of the Indo-Pacific.
Speaking at the Honolulu Defense Forum, the admiral of the navy Samuel Paparo also warned against the rise in cooperation between China, Russia and North Korea, describing it as an “emerging axis of autocracy ».
“China, Russia and North Korea have formed a triangle of troublemakers,” Paparo told the event sponsored by the Pacific Forum reflection group.
The popular liberation army had considerably increased activity around Taiwan in recent years, which leaves more difficult to distinguish large -scale exercises and real preparations for an attack, said Paparo.
“We are very close to that [point] Where daily, the figure sheet of an exercise could very well hide an operational warning, “he said.
“Their aggressive maneuvers around Taiwan at the moment are not exercises as they call them, these are rehearsals. These are rehearsals for the forced unification of Taiwan on the continent. »»
Referring to increasing cooperation between China, Russia and North Korea, Paparo said that the United States had seen “coordination in everything, bombers’ patrols that enter American Adiz [air defence identification zones] shared anti-satellite capacities and advanced submarine technologies from the seabed to heaven ”.
Highlighting an example of an increase in Russian activity in Indo-Pacific, an American defense official said that Russia had launched seven newly built submarines, including three nuclear propulsion boats with nuclear weapons, In Indo-Pacific since the start of its large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The others were two nuclear propulsion submarines carrying guided missiles and two attack submarines.
Paparo expressed his concern about the increase in military activity in China, saying that the United States had to move more quickly to fill critic gaps, such as the increase in the amount of weapons that the Pentagon had had at its disposal in Indo-Pacific. US Defense officials are anxious not to have enough weapons in the case of a war against Taiwan.
“Our magazines are low. Our maintenance arrears develop longer each month. . . We operate on increasingly thin margins for error, ”said Paparo. “Our opponents see these shortcomings, and they move aggressively to exploit them.”
Paparo, who recently organized a summit on artificial intelligence, said that the US military was to evolve with more emergency in the acquisition and deployment of different types of “unmanned systems”. He said AI would be a “key tool” to help the United States improve the signs of early alert of any possible attack on Taiwan.
Paparo called to considerably stimulate the production of autonomous systems to be deployed in disputed areas such as the Taiwan Strait to create a “hellish landscape” to dissuade or sabotage a Chinese invasion.
But Paparo also warned that the United States needed to quickly reform its supply system, which many Defense Experts are suitable requires a complete global.
“It’s a hard truth, technology alone will not win this fight. We must also reform the defense bureaucracy with an unprecedented emergency, “he said. “Supply at combat speed, not at the speed of committees.”
