From media
Washington loses 'every time' in war games against China, the Pentagon has warned
China would defeat the US military in a war over Taiwan, according to a top-secret US government assessment.
US reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, the highly classified ‘Overmatch Brief’ warns.
A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”, The New York Times reported.
China would defeat the US military in a war over Taiwan, according to a top-secret US government assessment.
US reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, the highly classified ‘Overmatch Brief’ warns.
A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”, The New York Times reported.
Losing Taiwan, the US’s key bulwark against Chinese power in the western Pacific, would deliver a severe strategic and symbolic blow to Washington.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/10/china-will-destroy-us-military-fight-over-taiwan/
Chinese company has started serial production of the hypersonic missile YKJ-1000, which boasts a range up to 1300 km and the ability to maneuver to evade air defense interception. Each missile costs only $99,000, making it extremely cost-effective compared to the interception expenses, which may be 40 times higher than the missile’s price. This advancement enables China to effectively suppress the air defense systems of potential adversaries in case of conflict.
https://ua.news/en/world/kitai-pochav-seriine-virobnitstvo-giperzvukovoyi-raketi-za-tsinoiu-shakheda
-With a range of roughly 1,300 kilometers and a unit price around £74,000, the weapon is vastly cheaper than U.S. hypersonics and appears optimized for mass production and export.
-In the hands of states like Iran or North Korea—or proxies such as the Houthis—a large salvo of these missiles could overwhelm still-nascent hypersonic defenses and threaten U.S. forces, allies, and shipping.
-Osborn argues that only credible retaliatory strike options plus affordable defenses—EW, high-power microwaves, and lasers—can offset this emerging “cheap hypersonic” threat.
Can U.S. Missile Defenses Survive a Swarm of China’s Discount Hypersonics?
The tactical advantage great-power countries have in the realm of hypersonics may quickly erode, now that China’s People’s Liberation Army has unveiled an inexpensive yet highly lethal hypersonic weapon for possible sale on the international market.
The weapon, called the YKJ-1000, is described as a cement-coated missile capable of reaching 1,300km and, perhaps of greatest significance, costs only 74,000 pounds—a tiny fraction of the $4 million to $15 million cost-per-missile for US hypersonic weapons.
It’s not clear how capable this inexpensive missile is. Yet, an article in “The Independent” details that the “explosive separation nuts have been replaced by electric ones and structural parts that can be die cast.”
It would therefore appear that the new low-cost Chinese-built hypersonic weapon could be easily manufactured at scale and exported to nations adversarial to the US and its allies.
The threat, therefore, would seem quite significant, given that many defenses against hypersonic weapons are still in the developmental stage.
It would be reasonable to assume that US and allied targets are, today, vulnerable to hypersonic strikes to a degree.
This inexpensive weapon, in particular, could be acquired quickly in large numbers, raising the prospect of a hypersonic missile salvo or “bolt out of the blue” attack.
A significant salvo of incoming hypersonic missiles would, without question, present new threat dimensions to US missile defenses.
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/u-s-navy-battle-stations-problem-china-is-building-dirt-cheap-hypersonic-missile-swarms
This inexpensive weapon, in particular, could be acquired quickly in large numbers, raising the prospect of a hypersonic missile salvo or “bolt out of the blue” attack.
A significant salvo of incoming hypersonic missiles would, without question, present new threat dimensions to US missile defenses.
The “cost curve” dynamic in this equation seems particularly significant: Should nations be able to quickly acquire a large arsenal of these weapons for much lower costs?
Losing Taiwan, the US’s key bulwark against Chinese power in the western Pacific, would deliver a severe strategic and symbolic blow to Washington.
The country’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford – recently sent to the Caribbean for Donald Trump’s crackdown on drug traffickers – is often destroyed in the wargames outlined in the brief.
The $13bn (£9.75bn) vessel, which entered service in 2022 after years of delays, is vulnerable to attacks from diesel-electric submarines and China’s arsenal of some 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at five times the speed of sound.
Eric Gomez, a research fellow at the Taiwan Security Monitor, said the end result was unclear when he participated in a wargame for a Taiwan conflict, but noted the US suffered heavy losses.
“The US loses a lot of ships in the process. A lot of F-35 and other tactical aircraft in the theatre are degraded pretty rapidly too,” he told the Telegraph.
“I think the high cost of it was really sobering when we did the after-action summaries, and we’re like, ‘Okay, like, you guys lost 100-plus fifth-generation aircraft, multiple destroyers, a couple of submarines, a couple of carriers’.
....
Last year, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China, and predicted the Asian country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/10/china-will-destroy-us-military-fight-over-taiwan/
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