War with China ‘would result in large-scale casualties,’ Army general says
The U.S. military would face immense challenges treating the volume of casualties and moving them to medical centers far from the front lines in a conflict with China.
Jeff Schogol, Patty Nieberg
Jul 24, 2025 4:22 PM EDT
The number of casualties the U.S. military would suffer in a war against China could be unlike anything it has experienced during the post-9/11 wars, said Lt. Gen. Joel “JB” Vowell, deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Pacific.
“Our assumptions for planning is that casualty estimates will be much higher than you might have seen or witnessed as part of the Global War on Terror between Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where there are very small numbers, relatively in contacts who were who were killed and injured, as compared to large-scale combat operations,” Vowell recently told reporters. “A potential conflict with the People’s Republic of China likely would result in large-scale casualties.”
China has a growing arsenal of hypersonic missiles and other advanced weapons that could pose a major threat to U.S. ships, including aircraft carriers, which can have a crew of up to 5,000 sailors and Marines.
“Those potential casualties are there, so we have to calculate that mass casualty event,” Vowell told reporters at a July 22 Defense Writers Group event, which is based at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-china-war-casualties/
