US Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan predicts China war in 2025 - New York Post

A four-star Air Force wide has told his officers to hole for warfare with China wrong 2 years — instructing them to drill work members “with the afloat knowing that unrepentant lethality matters most.”

“I anticipation I americium wrong,” Mike Minihan, caput of the 50,000-member Air Mobility Command, wrote successful the chilling Friday memo, NBC News reported. “My gut tells maine we volition combat successful 2025.”

The Department of Defense sought to downplay the memo. “These comments are not typical of the department’s presumption connected China,” a spokesperson said.

But Minihan, a 32-year Air Force seasoned based astatine Scott Air Force Base successful Illinois, laid retired his premise successful presumption of geopolitical logic, arsenic tensions betwixt China and Taiwan proceed to mount.

“[Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] secured his 3rd word and acceptable his warfare assembly successful October 2022,” the wide wrote. “Taiwan’s statesmanlike elections are successful 2024 and volition connection Xi a reason. United States’ statesmanlike elections are successful 2024 and volition connection Xi a distracted America.

“Xi’s team, reason, and accidental are each aligned for 2025,” Minihan concluded.

Chinese craft person made incursions into Taiwan’s airspace successful caller weeks.U.S. Indo-Pacific Command

He directed each unit of the AMC — the Air Force’s main mobility, evacuation, and refueling arm — to absorption connected people signifier successful February: “Fire a clip into a 7-meter people … Aim for the head.”

He besides ordered them to “consider their idiosyncratic affairs and … guarantee they are legally acceptable and prepared.”

The Chinese subject has made astir regular incursions into Taiwan’s airspace and waters successful caller weeks, arsenic Beijing continues to asseverate its power implicit the autarkic ideology that broke distant from China successful 1949.