A four-star
Air Force
general sent a memo to the officers he commands informing them of his belief, and the preparations expected for a U.S. war with
China
by 2025.
Gen. Michael A. Minihan, who heads Air Mobility Command and oversees the service’s fleet of transport and refueling aircraft, sent the memo on Friday, though dated Feb. 1, 2023, that said the conditions will be ripe for war for Chinese leader
Xi Jinping
in 2025. His assessment provides a much shorter timeline than other
Pentagon
officials, including Secretary of Defense
Lloyd Austin
.
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“I hope I am wrong,” Minihan wrote, which was first reported by
NBC News
. “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. Xi secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”
The signed memo is addressed to all air wing commanders in Air Mobility Command and other Air Force operational commanders and it included a litany of instructions for those under his command to meet monthly.
“This is an authentic internal memo from General Minihan addressed to his subordinate command teams,” Lindsey Wilkinson, an AMC spokeswoman, told the Washington Examiner. “His order builds on last year’s foundational efforts by Air Mobility Command to ready the Mobility Air Forces for future conflict, should deterrence fail.”
By the end of February, everyone under his command with weapons qualifications will “fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most,” the memo said. “Aim for the head.”
A defense official told the Washington Examiner that Minihan’s opinions “are not representative of the department’s view on China,” though the department’s National Defense Strategy does describe China as the United States’ “pacing challenge,” and as the only power that has the intent and capability to reshape the international order in their favor.
“The
National Defense Strategy
makes clear that China is the pacing challenge for the Department of Defense and our focus remains on working alongside allies and partners to preserve a peaceful, free and open Indo-Pacific,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
Top defense officials have warned that the Chinese military is both rapidly growing its arsenal and its aggressive behavior toward Taiwan, the island nation that considers itself independent, despite China’s claims as part of its own territory. As a result, the U.S. has sought to strengthen its ties in the Indo-Pacific.
“We’ve seen increased activity in aerial activity,” Austin
said
at a Jan. 11 news conference alongside Japanese officials. “We’ve seen increased surface vessel activity around Taiwan. And again, we believe that they endeavor to establish a new normal, but whether or not that means that an invasion is imminent, I seriously doubt that.”
He said a month earlier, “The People’s Republic of China is expanding and modernizing and diversifying its nuclear forces,” and that “the United States is on the verge of a new phase, one where for the first time, we face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors,” in reference to Russia as well.
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Similarly, Gen.
Mark Milley
, the chairman of the Joint Staff, told reporters in November that he believes a Taiwan invasion would pose too much risk at this time.
“I think he evaluates things on cost, benefit, and risk,” he explained. “I think that he would conclude that an attack on Taiwan in the near future will be an excessive amount of risk, and would end in a strategic, really, debacle for the Chinese military, and I think it would throw off their kind of dream of being the No. 1 economic and military power and so on.”
