A conflict with China in the Pacific would tax the U.S. military’s logistical ability to supply and sustain itself in extreme ways, according to the second-highest ranking officer of the United States Marine Corps.
“While our pacing threat is China, our pacing challenge or pacing function is logistics,” said General Eric Smith, the assistant commandant of the Marines.
“I don’t want to undersell how difficult logistics will be if we transpose that into the Pacific theater, where the expanse of the Pacific, the distances, create genuine, not intractable, but genuine wicked problems for us.”
Smith delivered the comments during a July 18 discussion on maritime security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank….