How Would a War Between the United States and China Really Go? An Analysis of Military Experience and Capabilities

The Importance of Experience

While marching soldiers can look impressive, experience in actual combat is fundamentally different and serves as the ultimate teacher. The Chinese military has not been tested in nearly half a century, having not engaged in a major conflict since 1979 against Vietnam. In that war, China suffered heavy casualties and failed to achieve its objectives of punishing Vietnam or protecting its ally Cambodia. Since then, China has focused internally on maintaining order and economic growth rather than external combat operations. As a result, the People’s Liberation Army lacks experience managing modern joint operations, conducting air campaigns, securing air superiority, amphibious landings, expeditionary naval missions, or overseeing logistics for prolonged force deployments. Simulation and training can only do so much. There is no substitute for the practical lessons learned through the trials of actual combat.

The Impact of Operation Desert Storm

In 1991, Operation Desert Storm provided a shocking demonstration of American military capabilities. A six-week air campaign followed by a 100-hour ground war saw coalition forces led by the United States liberate Kuwait with precision strikes and minimal casualties. This revolutionized modern warfare and exposed deficiencies across adversary forces like Iraq’s. For China, it served as a devastating revelation. Desert Storm highlighted the obsolescence of China’s military doctrine, equipment, and overall operational concepts in the face of American technical prowess, integration of services, and application of emerging technologies like stealth aircraft, precision-guided munitions, and space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. China realized it faced a daunting challenge to regain military parity after spending decades focused internally rather than evolving to counter American innovations. It kicked off a frantic process of military modernization, but could not replicate the experience-led learning the U.S. accrued through prolonged combat operations since the 1970s.

Modernizing Without Experience

In the decades since Desert Storm, China has poured massive resources into retraining forces, developing new doctrines, procuring advanced weapons, and emphasizing joint operations capabilities. However, modernizing entire services simultaneously without the trial-and-error feedback of real combat presents immense hurdles. Progress has also been hampered by political rather than operational priorities at times.
While new equipment has rolled off assembly lines, questions remain regarding how systems would integrate under live-fire conditions or whether training regimes have sufficiently evolved tactics. There is no substitute for practical experience identifying weaknesses to address, refining successful strategies, and accelerating positive feedback loops between technology, doctrine, and human performance. After decades removed from combat, the PLA remains untested in applying next-generation capabilities like stealth aircraft, offensive cyber and space operations, joint logistics, or integrated air and maritime missions.

The accumulated American edge

In sharp contrast, American forces have been at war continuously since the early 1970s. From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, they have accumulated unmatched experience in joint expeditionary operations, integrating new systems, and evolving tactics to defeat adversaries. Through continual refinement in combat, the U.S. military has maintained a qualitative edge, relying not just on technology but the practical adaptation that only prolonged engagement provides. While American public opinion now favors limiting overseas entanglements, the operational experience built up through constant adaptations and lessons learned cannot be readily replicated, providing the U.S. a significant if hard-to-quantify advantage in any high-end conflict. As one analyst notes, in a clash between peer powers, “experience teaches you which abstract ideas are nonsense, which ones are promising, and which ones need to be adjusted.” For any potential adversary, there are few better teachers than direct exposure to the crucible of modern war.

A Risky First Fight

Facing off against the experienced American military in its first major test carries immense risks for China. While massive investment and political will could gradually close quantitative gaps, qualitative gaps born of experience would be enormously difficult to overcome without actual conflict. As another observer argues, “it’s probably not wise for your first combat experience in two generations to be against your toughest possible adversary.” The kinks, growing pains, and inevitable early setbacks that come with any military’s first major deployment could prove calamitous if borne out against a battle-hardened foe. Throughout history, inexperience has served as a significant handicap, and even the most carefully planned operations seldom survive first contact with a resilient enemy. For the People’s Liberation Army, initiating live-fire exchanges with America’s seasoned forces would represent a highly challenging baptism by fire.

Has America Lost its Edge?

Some have raised concerns that prolonged counterinsurgency campaigns in places like Iraq and Afghanistan have drained military resources and distracted from preparations for peer conflicts. Others point to two decades removed from great power tensions as dulling traditional warfighting edge. However, several factors still favor the U.S.:

• Constant deployments and threat adaptation, even against asymmetric opponents, provide irreplaceable practical experience in combining new technologies, coordinating joint actions, and refining multi-domain strategies.
• Trillions invested over decades means continual innovation diffuses across services even during peacetime through collaborative war-gaming, experimentation, and iterative upgrades to platforms and operational concepts.
• Geopolitical tensions with China have spurred intensive focus on high-end military challenges and development of new operational frameworks like multi-domain operations.
• Rotational deployments to regions like Europe and Asia Pacific maintain regional overmatch abilities and interoperability with allies on whom the U.S. can rely in any major contingency. While not infallible, American forces retain hard-won expertise and ingrained adaptability to evolving threats that would undeniably help offset initial experience deficits in any renewed great power clash. Complacency is a risk, but reports of atrophied American warfighting edge seem premature.

  Conclusion

  While China’s military buildup continues apace, experience remains the ultimate teacher and equalizer in combat. The People’s Liberation Army’s lack of any large-scale operations since 1979 poses significant risks if its first trial comes against a power as seasoned as the United States. Modernization provides no substitute for the feedback loops and hard lessons only conflict provides. As long as tensions persist, America retains distinct qualitative advantages born of its accumulated battlefield experience that will prove difficult for China to surmount in an initial clash. Both deterrence and capability depend on constantly innovating - but experience, once lost, is infinitely harder to regain.

  How Would a War Between the United States and China Really Go? An Analysis of Military Experience and Capabilities

  Has the US Lost its Edge Due to Lack of Peer Conflicts?

  While the U.S. has been concentrated on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations since 2001, engagement in any type of sustained military action provides irreplaceable experience that bolsters capabilities in several ways: Practical Adaptation - Even against asymmetric threats, the armed forces are regularly refining tactics, improving coordination between units and services, upgrading equipment and managing logistics in active deployment areas. This constant adaptation to real-world conditions cannot be gain through simulation alone. Technological Innovation - Decades of R&D spending and experimentation during conflicts means new systems ripple through the forces rapidly. Lessons from the battlefield also stimulate innovation as private partners develop solutions to operational challenges. Interoperability - Frequent joint exercises with allies from Europe to the Indo-Pacific maintain coalition-building skills and integrated command-and-control to draw upon in multi-national operations. Regional presences likewise consolidate regional security cooperation. While non-state adversaries differ greatly from peer competitors, sustained engagement against any threat produces practical experience that supplements preparation. Limited real-world testing also occurs, such as exercises like Valiant Shield that practicing countering advanced anti-ship missiles and air defenses at near-combat scale. Reports of eroded American edge appear premature given these ongoing adaptions, even if counterterrorism differs dramatically from modern mechanized warfare. Constant operations provide priceless, hard-to-replicate experience managing combined arms under pressure that benefit warfighting capabilities.

  PLA Faces Significant Shortcomings Without Experience

  In contrast, the PLA lacks any large-scale combat operations since 1979 when China invaded Vietnam. While PLA strategy incorporates “local war” concepts against Taiwan, operational concepts remain untested and training focuses inward. As a result:

• Joint logistics and multidomain coordination between services remains untried at operational scale involving hundreds of thousands of personnel and platforms over vast distances.
• Complex operational art such as coordinating airpower with naval and ground maneuvers, information warfare and space/cyber integration lack live-fire field-testing against a sophisticated opponent.
• Emerging capabilities such as stealth aircraft, C4ISR assets and long-range precision missiles remain unproven and vulnerability to electronic/kinetic countermeasures unknown.
• Strategic command and political control over an expeditionary campaign far from Chinese shores posing immense logistical strains has never been stress-tested. Without accumulating experience incrementally against others, the PLA enters any conflict with the U.S. facing daunting learning curves while under combat pressure. Early losses could prove disproportionate and difficult to reverse. While PLA modernization continues, experience is the peerless teacher and only large-scale conflict provides the hard lessons which translate new technologies, platforms and concepts into warfighting mastery. For the U.