{"id":65396,"date":"2025-12-09T10:29:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T10:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/65396\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T10:29:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T10:29:15","slug":"opinion-america-must-prepare-for-the-future-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/65396\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | America Must Prepare for the Future of War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">U.S. politicians often boast that America has the \u2014\u2014 \u201cStrongest and most powerful military in the history of the world \u2014\u2014\u201d but behind closed doors, they\u2019re being told a different story. New York Times Opinion has learned that the Pentagon has been delivering a classified, comprehensive overview of U.S. military power called the Overmatch brief. The report shows what could happen if a war were to break out between China and the United States. The results are alarming. Last November, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that in all of the Pentagon\u2019s war games against China, we lose every time. \u201cChina\u2019s military threats against Taiwan are becoming more pronounced.\u201d \u201cThey do not believe it\u2019s a question of if China will invade but when.\u201d A war with China might seem purely hypothetical. But China\u2019s leader has ordered the People\u2019s Liberation Army to be ready to seize the island of Taiwan by 2027, and past U.S. presidents have said that America would defend the island nation\u2019s thriving democracy. \u201cAre you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d But defending Taiwan won\u2019t be easy because America now faces two new threats. War in the 21st century has fundamentally changed. \u201cDrones are extremely cost-effective and can cause large amounts of damage.\u201d And China has become a rising power unlike any other that the U.S. has competed with. As the Trump administration ramps up military spending, they\u2019re doubling down on symbols of might. \u201cIt\u2019ll be known as the F-47. There\u2019s never been anything even close to it.\u201d While overlooking alarming shortcomings. America must prepare for the future of war. This is the opinion of The New York Times editorial board. You might be thinking America should focus on peace, not war. But one of the most effective ways to prevent a war is to be strong enough to win it. That\u2019s why it\u2019s imperative that we change. The U.S. must reform not just its military, but also the political processes for funding it and the industrial base that supports it. For decades, our military has been built around the idea that more sophistication is better. This made sense during the Cold War, when the West could outspend Russia. But today, our reliance on expensive and exquisite systems has become a vulnerability. In war games, large ships like the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford are often destroyed. Still, the Navy plans to build at least nine additional Ford-class carriers in the coming decades. America must embrace new and more nimble means of warfare. This means simultaneously winning the war to build new autonomous weapons and leading the world in controlling them. Doing so will require challenging the status quo for how weapons are designed and manufactured. Defense spending is routinely steered toward the five major defense contractors, who have become experts at navigating thousands of pages of regulations, but they\u2019re both slow and costly. To jump-start new technologies, the Pentagon must relax its byzantine rules for buying weapons and make bets on young companies that show promise to get results. Congress needs to stop getting in the way. Each year, the United States spends billions of dollars that the military didn\u2019t ask for, often so that lawmakers can make their districts happy. Let\u2019s focus on winning wars, not elections. We also have a work-force problem. In the next decade, the U.S. will need to add 140,000 shipbuilders to its work force, and that\u2019s just to meet the demand for submarine construction. We should intensify recruiting and training programs for manufacturing trades, and we should focus on recruiting young people interested in software and technology. In long wars, the countries that can manufacture the most win. America now makes just 17 percent of all manufactured goods, while China makes almost twice as much and their lead is growing. It\u2019s only by partnering with allies that the U.S. can match China\u2019s manufacturing capabilities. So, rather than slapping our allies with tariffs, we should be partnering with them. It\u2019s been nearly 10 years since the Overmatch brief was first delivered. Its warnings have been updated and delivered again to the new Trump administration. We\u2019ve been warned about the urgent need for change. The question is whether we\u2019ll change in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. politicians often boast that America has the \u2014\u2014 \u201cStrongest and most powerful military in the history of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[827,153,1480,661,9,11,10,4658,34157,1351,17649,618,12725],"class_list":["post-65396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-international-relations","tag-military","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-pentagon","tag-peoples-liberation-army","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-taiwan","tag-us","tag-us-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}