By Franz-Stefan Gady
A new RAND report analyzes US and Chinese military capabilities based on two future war scenarios.
While the People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) is still far away from catching up with U.S. military aggregate capabilities, Chinese forces can still pose a formidable challenge to American power in China’s immediate periphery.
That’s the major conclusion of a new 430-page RAND report written by 14 scholars titled “The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996-2017.”
The study notes that China has made progress in most operational areas “with startling speed” while, however, simultaneously emphasizing that “U.S. forces retain some important advantages” in most categories.
In detail, the RAND scholars analyze ten different categories of military capabilities deemed crucial in the event of a Sino-U.S. conflict over Taiwan (closer to Mainland China) or the Spratly Islands (farther from Mainland China), looking at these capabilities during four specific different time periods from 1996 to 2017. The analysis pays particular attention to geography and distance in each scenario.
Read the full story at The Diplomat