Pacific commander says victory over Iran needed to deter Chinese attack on Taiwan

A U.S. victory in the war with Iran will help deter a Chinese military assault on Taiwan, the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command told Congress Tuesday.

Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, head of the Hawaii-based command in charge of military forces in the Asia-Pacific region, also revealed that China rapidly expanded both conventional and nuclear forces in the past two years. He urged the Pentagon and defense contractors to speed the development and deployment of the arms needed to deter Beijing.

“There’s no substitute for prevailing on the battlefield,” Adm. Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing on the need to win the Iran war.

Indo-Pacific Command forces were directly involved in some operations against Iran, including strikes on Iranian naval vessels and the interdiction of Iranian ships, he said.

“What I want the [People’s Republic of China] to see is that the United States employs capability and will in response to aggression, and I don’t want them to doubt that in any way, and that supports deterrence, and deterrence is our highest duty,” the admiral said.

China’s military monitored U.S. and Israeli military operations against Tehran, learning from the successful use of advanced military decision-making power, he said.

And Iran’s missile and drone strikes on regional states showed China the power of small, low-cost munitions.

On China’s rapid military buildup, Adm. Paparo revealed that since 2024, China has delivered 12 submarines, including nuclear attack and nuclear ballistic missile submarines, an aircraft carrier, two cruisers, 10 destroyers, seven frigates, and amphibious and combat logistics forces to People’s Liberation Army forces.

Additionally, the Chinese military will more than double the number of nuclear warheads in its arsenal in the next five years from current estimates of more than 600 warheads.

The large-scale arms buildup is for power projection, regional coercion and to enforce Beijing’s vision of a new China-led rules-based order, he said.

Adm. Paparo urged senators to increase the number of new B-21 strategic bombers and Columbia-class nuclear missile submarines, and to speed up fielding hypersonic missiles, drone aircraft and maritime systems and advanced weapons technology.

Adm. Paparo also testified that the number of new Columbia missile submarines should be increased from 12 to 16, providing an additional 64 missile tubes.

“It would enhance our ability to provide extended deterrence. It would enhance our overall readiness, not just for strategic weapons, but for tactical weapons, and I’m strongly in favor of enhancing that,” he said.

The comments came as the Pentagon on Tuesday unveiled a $1.5 trillion defense budget request for new ships, aircraft and the Golden Dome’s missile defense.

Taiwan remains a major U.S.-China flash point with Beijing refusing to renounce the use of force to annex the island and conducting nearby threatening and provocative military operations that Adm. Paparo said in the past included invasion rehearsals.

Adm. Paparo said his forces are also learning from the use of low-cost drones in the Russia-Ukraine war and applying those lessons to the effort to deter China from using force against Taiwan.

The command has adopted a “hellscape strategy” — low-cost bombs and missiles and drone warfare to increase the costs on China of any attack, he said.

“Bringing those lessons to bear to the max extent possible is an imperative,” Adm. Paparo said.

Asked about the depletion due to the war in the Middle East of both high-end and low-cost missile and bomb stocks, Adm. Paparo said defense contractors need to move rapidly in restocking weapons supplies.

“I think it’ll take one to two years for them to scale,” he said. “It won’t be soon enough, and I think that we really must press the system with non-traditional vendors, bringing to bear new, low-cost munitions such as hypersonics, low-cost cruise missiles, and then across a variety of drone and unmanned systems,” he said.

The Pentagon is pressuring arms manufacturers like Lockheed and Raytheon to build replacement weapons faster and so far, progress has been good, he said.

In his prepared statement to the committee, Adm. Paparo called on the government to “act with urgency to strengthen deterrence, enhance warfighting readiness and force posture, procure critical capabilities, and deepen partnerships.”

Specific arms the commander wants to see rapidly produced include advanced heavyweight torpedoes, joint air-to-surface standoff missiles-extended range, long range anti-ship missiles, maritime strike Tomahawk cruise missiles, precision strike missiles and standard missiles-3 and -6.

Producing affordable hypersonic missiles and increasing production of essential low-cost drones and advanced maritime mines also is an urgent need, he said. “Current production timelines are misaligned with operational expenditures and the threats we face in today’s global security environment.”

Overall, the Indo-Pacific strategy is to “deny China from achieving its objectives through military aggression, to deter it. Deterrence is our highest duty,” he said in verbal testimony.

Asked during the hearing what forces he needs, Adm. Paparo said: “I don’t have enough amphibious ships. We don’t have enough surface destroyers. We certainly don’t have enough attack submarines, and our trajectory is on the wrong side.”

Greater numbers of combat logistics ships and medium-sized unmanned surface vessels capable of conducting strikes, sensing and anti-submarine warfare also are needed.

Adm. Paparo also voiced concerns about the recent Trump administration decision to loosen exports of advanced Nvidia H200 microchips to China that critics say will be used by Beijing to boost weapons through artificial intelligence.

China’s military is a “fast follower” of U.S. advances in military artificial intelligence and have applied “every bit of intellectual property that’s ever been shared.”

“So I have deep concerns with anything that enables them to become a better AI-powered headquarters than our headquarters,” he said, referring to artificial intelligence.

Army Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, commander of U.S. Forces Korea and who testified together with Adm. Paparo, said Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, systems were not moved from South Korea to the Middle East.

The Washington Post reported in March that part of a THAAD battery was being sent to the Middle East.

THAAD systems are capable of shooting down medium- and short-range missiles fired from North Korea.

Asked about the reported move, Gen. Brunson said, “We’ve not moved any THAAD systems. So THAAD still remains on the peninsula.”

“Currently, we are sending munitions forward, and those are sitting right now waiting to move,” he said.

Earlier, the Army moved radars to the Middle East from South Korea prior to the June bombing strike against Iranian nuclear facilities called Operation Midnight Hammer.

“Some of those things have not come back yet, but the THAAD systems themselves remain on the peninsula,” Gen. Brunson said, adding that he expected them to stay in place.

The four-star general said his forces moved some of the THAAD battery elements to different locations in South Korea and that set off inaccurate reports in “the information space.”

“I was dynamically moving those around, so that I could then sequence them into Osan Air Base to prepare them to move the munitions and ⁠that caused a big kerfuffle on the peninsula,” he said, referring to one of the two main U.S. air bases in South Korea.