Pentagon War Games Show US Would Lose Aircraft Carriers in Potential China-Taiwan Conflict, Secret Report Reveals

I Stand For Freedom ^ | 12/11/2025 | Noah Stanton

[SeekAndFind]

Military strategists have long compared warfare to chess, where grand masters plot moves and countermoves across a global board. But what happens when you discover you’ve been studying chess while your opponent has been perfecting an entirely different game? For decades, America’s military might has stood unchallenged, our aircraft carriers projecting power across every ocean, our technology the envy of the world. Yet behind the Pentagon’s classified doors, a disturbing pattern has emerged in recent years.

The rise of China as a military power has transformed from a distant concern to an immediate challenge. While American forces remain spread across the globe, Beijing has focused its resources on one objective: dominating the Pacific. Taiwan, that small island democracy just 100 miles from China’s coast, has become the potential flashpoint that could determine the balance of power for the next century. Our military planners have run countless simulations of a Taiwan conflict, testing strategies, weapons, and resolve.

What they’ve discovered should make every American sit up and pay attention—though I’m betting you haven’t heard about it from the mainstream media. The Pentagon’s most sophisticated war games, designed to test our readiness for a Pacific conflict, have been yielding results that challenge our assumptions about American military superiority. These aren’t peacenik think tanks or academic exercises—these are the military’s own assessments, run by officers who’ve dedicated their lives to defending this nation.

According to a highly classified Pentagon document called the “Overmatch Brief,” recently reported by The Telegraph, the United States military would face catastrophic losses in a war over Taiwan. The assessment was so stark that a national security official under Joe Biden reportedly turned pale upon reviewing it.

From ‘The Telegraph’:

A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”. US reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, the highly classified “Overmatch Brief” warns.

Let that sink in for a moment. “Redundancy after redundancy.” We’re essentially bringing a knife to a gunfight—a very expensive, high-tech knife.

The specifics are sobering. Our crown jewel, the USS Gerald R. Ford—a $13 billion aircraft carrier that entered service in 2022—is “often destroyed” in these war game scenarios. China’s arsenal of 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of traveling at five to eight times the speed of sound, would overwhelm our defenses. Meanwhile, the United States has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile of our own. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Defense Secretary pick, didn’t mince words last year when he said that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China.

Yet incredibly, despite these dire assessments, the Pentagon plans to build nine additional Ford-class carriers. The military-industrial complex, now dominated by just five major contractors (down from 50 in the 1990s), continues selling the same expensive, complex weapons systems that these war games show would be sitting ducks in an actual conflict. While China masses cheap drones and missiles, we’re still fighting the last war with billion-dollar behemoths. Does this sound like winning strategy to you?

Now, let me be clear—and maybe a bit cynical here—classified reports have a funny way of surfacing when budgets are being debated and strategies questioned. This leak could be the Pentagon’s way of pushing for the massive modernization funding it wants. Our military has cried wolf before, and somehow America always finds a way to innovate when truly challenged. Remember, this is the same military establishment that spent the Obama and Biden years focusing on pronoun policies and diversity quotas while China was building hypersonic weapons. Perhaps their war game losses say more about leadership priorities than actual capabilities.

But here’s where I get genuinely worried: we can’t dismiss this entirely. The Ukraine conflict has shown how cheap drones can destroy million-dollar tanks, how quantity has a quality all its own. If China can mass-produce weapons that overwhelm our defensive systems, our technological edge means nothing. Thankfully, President Trump seems to understand this, appointing Dan Driscoll as his “drone guy” to modernize our approach. If Pete Hegseth is taking notes—and I hope to God he is—he has the opportunity to break the Pentagon’s addiction to legacy weapons and embrace the future of warfare.

You want to know what I think? The truth is probably somewhere between panic and complacency. Our servicemen and women remain the finest in the world, and American innovation, when properly unleashed, has no equal. But we’ve allowed bureaucratic inertia and contractor interests to guide strategy for too long. This report, whether fully accurate or partly propaganda, should serve as a wake-up call. Not to abandon our strength, but to reimagine it. America didn’t become the arsenal of democracy by fighting yesterday’s wars. If China wants to challenge us, let’s make sure we’re playing the right game—and for God’s sake, let’s make sure we’re winning it.

Sources: The Telegraph, Mail Online

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: china; taiwan; wargames

[FlingWingFlyer]

The terrorist DemonRAT Party running the joint with their drunken skank Judgettes will make sure “secret reports” get leaked.

[LouAvul]

Not much of a secret, now, is it?

[Freee-dame]

Can a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier be taken out by bombs falling from drones?

[DoodleBob]

I wrote his on the prior posting of this article/situation.

Purely from a theoretical perspective, if the simulation showed that we WIN every time, that would mean less basis for more money for weapons, soldiers, R&D, etc.

This, hypothetically of course, would mean that the Pentagon has an incentive to create simulations where they LOSE.

Indeed, what benefit is it to them if they win in a sim? It’s not like the private sector where achievement is rewarded.

In govt, failure = $.

Again…this is purely hypothetical. No government agency would rig a test to get more money. That would be unprecedented.

Do I really need the /sarc?

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Can a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier be taken out by bombs falling from drones?

Yes, in principle a modern aircraft carrier can be badly damaged or even sunk by bombs or warheads delivered from drones, but doing so against a fully alert carrier strike group is extremely difficult and would normally require a large, coordinated, high‑end drone or loitering‑munition swarm rather than a few small quadcopters.

But consider — A U.S. carrier does not sail alone; it is surrounded by a strike group of cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and aircraft, plus layered defenses: long‑range fighters, ship‑based missiles, close‑in guns, electronic warfare, and increasingly dedicated anti‑drone interceptors like Coyote and Roadrunner‑M.

These systems are designed specifically to prevent small numbers of drones from getting close; analysis suggests a carrier group can probably handle a handful or even dozens of incoming UAVs, especially if detected early.

The main worry is large, coordinated swarms (air, surface, or even underwater drones) that might overwhelm sensors and magazines, or attack when the carrier is constrained, such as in port or at anchor, where maneuver and some defenses are limited.

Wargame and doctrinal discussions describe scenarios where massed drones could “mission‑kill” or even sink major surface combatants if defenses are saturated, particularly near a strong adversary’s coast where drones operate from many launch points.

So, yes, A multibillion‑dollar carrier is not immune; in the right conditions, bombs from drones or loitering munitions could catastrophically damage or sink it, especially as part of a large, sophisticated attack.

However, against a prepared carrier strike group at sea, a small number of commercial‑style drones with improvised bombs would almost certainly be shot down; it takes scale, coordination, and high‑end systems to have a serious chance of “taking out” the ship.

I’m sure China is already planning for this possibility and so is the USA.

[bosco24]

“Can a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier be taken out by bombs falling from drones?”

No, that job will be done by China’s arsenal of 600 hypersonic missiles.

[philman_36]

Given the state of our military during the Biden era it's not surprising the report came to the conclusion it did.
If you don't intend to win you will always see defeat in any scenario.

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Secret?? Worst kept “secret” ever, this has been known for many years.

[wbarmy]

Can a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier be taken out by bombs falling from drones?

No, we have some really spooky systems which make every known type of drone go spastic or stop. But that does nothing against hypersonic missiles. The only way I have heard of defending against them is giving them different targets, high tech decoys.

The only real advantage we have is the truly abominable technical level of the average Chinese service member. They are a top down, orders only, no one does anything till XI says so.

Exactly like the Soviets of Brezhnev. No one will make a decision until they have top cover.

[alternatives?]

“bombs falling from drones?”

The bomb and drone are one entity.

[Drew68]

Not much of a secret, now, is it?

Hasn't been a secret for years now.

We've been reading "China sinks U.S. carrier in secret war games" articles since at least 2013.

[stanne]

The secret report or the not secret report

[Captain Walker]

I thought (Ret) Gen Van Riper demonstrated the vulnerability of the carrier when he "sunk" one during a war game prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The US couldn't have that result stand, as the Bush administration was trying to get support for the war, so the carrier was brought back to life.

Van Riper called BS and he resigned.

[philman_36]

And, of course, without being able to read it for themselves, as well as see who wrote it,
the people of America must depend on second hand analysis from the media.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: The secret report or the not secret report

In the USA, almost nothing stays secret. Too many loose lips lying around…

[Da Coyote]

It doesn’t take an expert strategist to know that the carriers will be the first thing to go, and the Chinese will quite simply overwhelm our limited defenses.

[MinorityRepublican]

We should be building drone ships instead.

Aircraft carriers are obsolete. Really, that was the case when missiles became common even before we invented drones.

We got away with it because we've been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[jonrick46]

"China’s arsenal of 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of traveling at five to eight times the speed of sound, would overwhelm our defenses."

Not when we have this weapon:

[Tallguy]

No. Presently the drones lack the range and payload to reach where the carriers will be — east of the Philippines where they hope to be out of range of the DF-21D ballistic missiles. The biggest threat to the carriers will be PLAN submarines.