As the war in Iran enters its third month, it’s providing a window for China into how US military capabilities work under fire, and a useful reminder that, on any battlefield, the adversary always has a big say in the outcome, CNN reported.
CNN spoke with a range of experts in China, Taiwan and elsewhere about how the last two months of fighting in and around the Persian Gulf can inform what might happen in any possible conflict that would pit Beijing against Washington.
They warned of China misreading its own strengths, lack of experience and holding on to a too-narrow view of the conflict and its consequences.
Fu Qianshao, a former colonel in China’s air force, said his major takeaway from the fighting so far is that the People’s Liberation Army can’t forget about its defenses, noting how Iran has found ways around US anti-missile systems like the Patriot or Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
“We need to devote significant efforts to identify weakness in our defensive side to ensure we remain invincible in future wars,” Fu told CNN.
The PLA has rapidly expanded offensive firepower capacity in recent years, adding missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles that can evade interceptors and the platforms that can launch them.
The PLA Air Force is adding fifth-generation stealth fighters at a rapid rate and will field around 1,000 J-20 jets – the rough equivalent of US F-35s – when performing in a long-range precision strike mode, according to the British think tank RUSI.
China has a long-range stealth bomber, similar to the US’ B-2 or the B-21, in the works.
But its defenses are another matter.
Analysts note Iran was able to penetrate US air defenses in the Persian Gulf with relatively primitive technology, including low-cost Shahed drones and lower-cost ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, the US unleashed an air campaign on Iran with much more sophisticated weaponry, like F-35s and B-2s, and mixed it with cheaper, less high-tech guided munitions dropped from B-1s, B-52s and F-15s. They’ve knocked out everything from missile launchers to naval vessels to bridges.
It’s a mix that Beijing must plan for, Fu said.
“We have to delve deeper to effectively guard our key sites, airfields and ports against attacks and raids,” he said.
Across the Taiwan Strait
When it comes to a possible US-China conflict, Taiwan is often viewed as a potential flashpoint.
China’s ruling Communist Party has vowed to “reunify” with the self-governing democracy, despite having never controlled Taiwan. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has not ruled out using military force to do so.
In Taiwan, analysts recognize that China has assembled a military that can match both the US in high-tech precision weaponry and Iran in low-cost, high-volume drone warfare.
“Long-range rockets and drone swarms will definitely play a key role in China’s joint military operations against Taiwan,” Chieh Chung, an associate research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told CNN.
But would that key role be enough to win a war across the Taiwan Strait?
China is the world’s leading drone manufacturer, and the numbers of unmanned weapons systems its manufacturers can produce is staggering, according to analysts.
“Chinese civilian manufacturers have the capacity to retool in under a year to turn out one billion weaponized drones annually,” a 2025 report on China’s drone program in the analytical platform War on the Rocks states.
Some warn that Taiwan isn’t ready to face those kinds of numbers.
A recent report by a government watchdog said the Taiwanese military’s current drone countermeasures are “ineffective” and pose a “major security risk” to critical infrastructure and military bases.
To be fair, Taiwan is not standing still, and it is taking steps to improve those countermeasures.
Gene Su, the managing director of Taiwan’s flagship drone manufacturer Thunder Tiger, called for more investment in Taiwan’s capability to mass-produce drones. “We need to produce continuously, day and night, to counter our enemies,” he said.
The US is learning, too, and there is recognition that in a conflict in the Pacific, it may find itself as the defender, not the attacker.
Drones make warfare much more costly for the offensive side, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, told a US Senate hearing in April.
If there were a fight over Taiwan, the island or the US could use drones to target Chinese ships or aircraft carrying possibly hundreds of thousands of PLA troops across the Taiwan Strait for an assault and occupation.
Each ship or plane, and the troops it carries, is vastly more expensive than the drones that could destroy them. That’s a deterrent factor that’s been on display in the Iran war, where the US Navy, cautious of Iran’s asymmetric warfare, has rarely sent ships through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf.
Beijing has almost certainly taken note that Paparo has advocated filling the Taiwan Strait with thousands of drones in the air, on the water and beneath the sea, targeting the Chinese military, so the PLA would have difficulty crossing the waterway to move on Taiwan.
bd-pratidin/GR
