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US Air Force General Michael Minihan, commander of the Air Mobility Command, thinks we are within two years of a regional war with Communist China, and he’s sure enough about it to put the prediction in writing. In a memo to staff and all of his subordinate commanders, titled February 2023 Order in Preparation for — The Next Fight, he opens by saying:

I hope I am wrong…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.

That’s the opening. I think it pretty much syncs with a lot of open-source intelligence that indicates that Xi had concluded that the Republic of China is not going to voluntarily welcome the form of dystopian totalitarianism that Xi was able to impose on Hong Kong and sell to Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and several Democrat-run states here at home. He has made “reunification” a top priority of his regime, and we need to take seriously what he’s telling us.

General Minihan sets the objective to “deter, and if required, defeat China…inside the first island chain.” He goes on to lay out his intent for how his command will prepare.

Run deliberately, not recklessly. You will be governed by the principle of calculated risk training, which you shall interpret to mean the avoidance of death, serious injury, and Class A damage to attain higher readiness, integration, and agility. If the Tactic, Technique, and Procedure you are developing increases AMC’s ability to fight and win inside the first island chain…move out. If you are comfortable in your approach to training, then you are not taking enough risk.

This is not new for General Minihan. He wasn’t in the mood to mince words when he took the stage to introduce the “Mobility Manifesto” at the 2022 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. He even caused heads to explode in some quarters.

AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber: The Mobility Manifesto from Air & Space Forces Association on Vimeo.

All right, So I’m going to make everybody nervous here. I’m not bound to the stage, I’m not bound to a script. I’m untethered as of now. … I do have something to say. I can’t see the clock. I’m going to go till I go, all right?

…

Lethality matters most. When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better, your marriage is stronger. Why is the mobility guy talking about lethality? I’m not coming at you as a C-130 driver, I’m not coming at you as a mobility officer. I’m coming at you like an
Airman, like Rickenbacker, like Mitchell, like Lemae, Olds, Levitow, Sijan. This is who we are. We are lethal. Do not apologize for it. The pile of our nation’s enemy dead, the pile that is the biggest is in front of the United States Air Force. This is why we mutinied in 1947.

Read the whole speech; it’s worth the time.

One of the most interesting items in General Minihan’s memo was the directive that “All AMC aligned personnel with weapons qualifications will fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.”

To say that General Minihan’s memo was not greeted with hosannas is an understatement.

“These comments are not representative of the department’s view on China,” a defense official said in comments emailed to Air & Space Forces Magazine on Jan. 28.

A statement from Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder reiterated the department’s formal policy on China.

“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,” Ryder said.

I don’t know how much impact General Minihan will have, but he clearly identified the problem. China is a hyperaggressive power that has a relatively small window of opportunity to achieve its dream of destroying the Republic of China and returning control of Taiwan to Beijing. We can refuse to believe them when they publicly proclaim their goals, but we do so at our peril.

While writing this, I was listening to this interview with Andrew Roberts on his new Churchill biography, Walking with Destiny. He tells of how the SmartSet™, including President Harry Truman, disavowed Churchill after he used the term “Iron Curtain” to describe the USSR’s enslavement of Western Europe. All the really smart foreign policy people were convinced that Joe Stalin was our buddy and Churchill was a crank. The Air Force response to General Minihan carried that tone. I have the interview cued up to that segment.

You can talk about aircraft carriers all you want, but any war against China will be a logistics war. The distances are immense. We don’t have enough airframes to do what needs to be done. Unless the four-star is laser-focused on fighting and winning his part of the next war and not on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity programs, we’ll lose a fight that we can’t afford to lose. As the general said, ” Nobody’s going to
care what our plans are for five or 10 years if we lose tomorrow. They won’t care.”

Minihan Letter by streiff at redstate on Scribd