Since 2018, the military has shifted to focus on China and Russia after decades fighting insurgencies, but it still faces challenges to produce weapons and come up with new ways of waging war
Clint Hinote returned from a deployment in Baghdad in the spring of 2018 to a new assignment and a staggering realization.
A classified Pentagon wargame simulated a Chinese push to take control of the South China Sea. The Air Force officer, charged with plotting the service’s future, learned that China’s well-stocked missile force had rained down on the bases and ports the U.S. relied on in the region, turning American combat aircraft and munitions into smoldering ruins in a matter of days.
“My response was, ‘Holy crap. We are going to lose if we fight like this,’” he recalled
