Guam won’t have missile defenses in time for Taiwan war, admiral fears
By
Joel Gehrke
March 20, 2024 5:32 pm
U.S. citizens and forces in Guam could be exposed to bombardment from China, according to the top U.S. military officer in the Indo-Pacific who urged lawmakers to expedite the funding for missile defenses.
“We must go faster,” Admiral John Aquilino, who leads U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told the House Armed Services Committee. “That needs to be in place by 2027.”
Aquilino trod lightly around the needs driving that timeline, but the date looms large on calendars around Washington, D.C., because Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his military to “be ready” for a potential invasion of Taiwan by 2027. Yet U.S. leaders have neglected Aquilino’s repeated appeals for funding to upgrade U.S. military defenses in the region.
“The security environment [is] the most dangerous I’ve seen as in 40 years in uniform,” Aquilino said. “And a big portion of that [is] the cooperation … between [China] and Russia … That cooperation, from those two authoritarian nations, puts us in a different security environment.”
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense/2930893/guam-wont-have-missile-defenses-taiwan-war/
