June 4, 2026: China is stockpiling food, oil, coal and essential raw materials to sustain the population and the military in the event of a war with the Americans. One of the problems with stockpiling petroleum is that the Americans have developed increasingly effective methods to sanction Russian petroleum exports. China depends on Persian Gulf oil which is now blocked by the war with Israel and the Americans. In the event of a war over Taiwan, the Americans, or the Indonesians by themselves, could easily shut down the Persian Gulf to China oil route. China and Iran have been economic and military allies for decades. In response, the Americans have imposed several rounds of economic sanctions against both countries.

The growing Chinese stockpiles are meant to keep the Chinese economy and military operational long enough to negotiate an end to the war. Currently China imports about 75 percent of the oil and nearly half the natural gas it requires. Protecting these stockpiles is difficult and expensive. The Americans have non-nuclear ballistic missiles that can be launched from cargo aircraft and strike targets deep inside China and destroy them even if they are underground. Another problem with any war with America is that the United States is self-sufficient in nearly everything, including rare earths. America is an oil and natural gas exporter and far more difficult for China to attack economically than the other way around.

Chinese plans for economic survival during wartime are vague and disjointed and slogging, not walking or running, towards their objectives. This is another reason why China does not want a war with the Americans because the Americas and Europe purchase most Chinese exports. Disrupting that commerce would have long-term implications since most of these Chinese customers would seek other suppliers and many of those suppliers would remain after the war ended.

Another factor to consider is that the Americans have a lot more experience than China in managing military stockpiles that are used in wartime. The Americans have a lot of combat experience while China has very little.

Over the last decade the America Army continues its efforts to rebuild its stockpiles of ammunition and equipment for use against a large, well-equipped enemy force in a war. These stockpiles are also referred to as the War Reserves that consist of large quantities of munitions and spares stockpiled to keep the troops supplied during the initial month or so of a war. These stockpiles must contain the most useful munitions and other supplies and be positioned so they can be moved to the combat zone as quickly, and efficiently as possible. Without adequate logistics, the right supplies delivered in time, wars or at least battles, are often lost early and often.

The nature of these war reserves has changed a lot since the 1990s. For one thing, the widespread use of GPS guided shells and rockets since the late 1990s has led to most artillery being retired. One guided shell or rocket can do the work of dozens of unguided projectiles. The validity of this was proven time and again while fighting Islamic terrorists since 2001. This included 2016-18 battles against ISIL/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant where the Islamic terrorists were defending urban areas the same way a conventional force would, but smart shells and rockets were used effectively and frequently rather than the older tactic of using far more unguided shells and rockets. In both cases, the urban areas are destroyed but, with guided projectiles, it is done with more precision and that enables the friendly ground forces to advance more rapidly and with fewer casualties than in the past. Because of the battles with ISIL in Iraq and Syria, the effectiveness of fewer guided projectiles replacing many more unguided ones was proven and ammunition stockpiles could be adjusted accordingly.

By 2020 the emphasis switched to GMLRS/GPS guided 227mm rockets and upgrades for the longer range 600mm ATACMS guided rocket. For 2020 the army ordered 10,193 GMLRS rockets versus 8,101 in 2019 and 6,936 in 2018. In that time the Army discovered that it was easier to use the longer range, 70 kilometers or more, GMLRS than trying to develop longer range artillery. The need here was to match longer range artillery developed and put in service by Russia and China. Even with longer barrels and rocket assisted shells artillery could not reach as far as GMLRS. Moreover, jamming the GPS signal is a less effective enemy option with the much improved microchip based INS/Inertial Guidance System long used as a less accurate backup in weapons using GPS for projectile guidance. The new INS is nearly as accurate as GPS and if you have to be sure, fire two or three GMLRS at the same target. That works, especially since INS cannot be jammed.

There is still a need for guided and unguided 155mm artillery shells. To provide choice the army has been ordering many more of the PGK/Projectile Guidance Kit 155mm fuze. The PGK fuze turns an unguided 155mm shell into a GPS/INS guided one. These were found to be exceptionally useful in Syria and Iraq and, in mid-2017, the American army ordered thousands of PGK fuzes in order to establish a large stockpile. The army still uses unguided artillery shells for situations that don’t require precise accuracy for each shell, but the PGK provides options that can be implemented quickly to turn any dumb shell into a smart one.

Before 2008, as the war began to wind down in Iraq, there were warnings that stockpiles and war reserves were being allowed to shrink to dangerously low levels. In early 2016 American military leaders went public about how their complaints about smart bomb and missile shortages were being ignored. In 2015 over 25,000 smart bombs and missiles were used by American and allied warplanes operating over Iraq and Syria. Nearly all weapons were supplied by American firms but the American politicians and military leaders couldn’t agree on how to get the money to replace bombs being taken from the war reserve stocks.

This is not a new problem. It was a major and widespread problem in 2011 when NATO warplanes provided air support for Libyan rebels. In the aftermath of the 2011 campaign NATO countries noted the importance of smart bombs and guided missiles, and the tendency of European nations to maintain meager stocks of these and many other munitions and spare parts for the aircraft that deliver them. NATO nations did not start acquiring smart bombs until after the Cold War ended, about the same time their procurement budgets were cut sharply. European defense spending continues to shrink, and war reserve stocks are still not a high priority. In Europe, the attitude seemed to be that the Americans would be able to supply smart bombs in a crisis. For a long time that was the case, but with the Americans now running down their own war reserves and deadlocked over what to do about that, which is usually not much, American allies become anxious.

In 2011 the situation was made worse by the fact that the NATO air forces delivering most of the bombs in Libya had already used many of them in Afghanistan over the previous few years. The now chastised NATO air forces are still trying to deal with the 2011 mess and now they find that their safety net, dependable emergency deliveries from American war reserves, is rapidly disappearing or no longer as available as in the past.

All this was yet another reminder that cutting corners in maintaining war reserve stocks is always a false economy. But smart bombs and missiles are expensive. About 30 percent of the cost of the NATO Libya operation was for these high-tech weapons, with the rest of the expense being operational costs including fuel, spare parts, and personnel expenses. But if you don’t have the smart bombs to deliver there is no action, except for the imaginative stories conjured by many political and military leaders to shift the blame onto someone else.