AI-assisted modelling by the Heritage Foundation finds critical risks to fuel and munitions on both sides
The US faces critical “sustainment risks” that might lead to rapid defeat in a conflict with China, according to a Heritage Foundation report, which also found that while such a scenario could start in the Taiwan Strait, it would not be contained there.
Based on the findings of an AI-based study called Tidalwave – after a 1943 operation of the same name – the right-wing think tank urged Washington to immediately strengthen American fuel and munitions reserves and logistical networks.
At the same time, China’s fuel and ammunition systems were “vulnerable to a range of US tools before and during conflict and more visible or exposed than the forces they support”, the study said.
“Allowing the systems that support the PLA to operate with impunity before and during conflict would carry grave strategic consequences,” the report added, referring to the People’s Liberation Army.
AI-assisted simulations based on more than 7,000 data sources focused on fuel and ammunition vulnerabilities for both sides in scenarios based on a 365-day US-China conflict in the western Pacific Ocean.
The study found that both the Americans and Chinese faced critical risks in sustaining supplies of fuel and munitions, making the first 30-60 days crucial in determining the long-term shape of the war by quickly reducing numbers of aircraft and ships.
The results of the simulations highlighted “a consistent and consequential pattern: a US-PRC conflict is decided early by how quickly platforms are destroyed and logistics are strained”, the report said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
The US needed to begin now “to degrade [China’s] strategic petroleum reserve and long-range precision fires capacity and prioritise disruption at the outset of aggression”, the report said.
If it did not, the US military “would not be able to prevent” an attack on Taiwan or “the fall of others in the first island chain – including Japan”.
The study found that the US oiler fleet was ageing and insufficient for at-sea fuel replenishment, while the strategic sealift capacity from the US west coast was “almost certainly too slow and fragile … making it a critical lagging constraint”.
Both fuel and munitions logistics were too reliant on a few large, centralised “mega-hubs”, such as Guam – almost certainly a target in a conflict – while dependence on specific pier terminals created critical operational bottlenecks, it said.
More urgently, the report warned that US munitions inventories, particularly long-range precision-guided munitions and torpedoes, “are almost certainly insufficient” for any high-intensity conflict.
The US defence industrial base was also “unlikely to be able to produce key munitions at the rate required” during a war, nor could it rapidly increase production to meet those demands, at least within the first year of conflict, the report said.
At the same time, the researchers highlighted Beijing’s reliance on the Strait of Malacca for its crude oil imports. About 70 per cent of China’s total supplies come from overseas, with 80 per cent of that travelling the narrow sea lane that is one of the world’s busiest ocean routes.
“Significant disruption or blockade of this single chokepoint would cripple China’s crude oil imports, rapidly depleting reserves,” they wrote.
Ningbo-Zhoushan and other Chinese deepwater ports and terminals, along with fixed, unhardened refinery infrastructure, were also identified as critical weaknesses in fuel sustainment.
