Report: China Is Acquiring New Military Equipment ‘Five To Six Times’ Faster Than U.S.

China is acquiring new military equipment “five to six times” faster than the United States, according to a top Air Force official.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt gave the warning during a speech in San Diego in June, according to The Drive. The Air Force says Holt is “responsible for all aspects of contracting relating to the acquisition of weapon systems, logistics, and operational support for the Air Force and provides contingency contracting support to the geographic combatant commanders.”

In addition to acquiring weapons more quickly, China is also operating more efficiently than the United States, Holt says.

“In purchasing power parity, they spend about one dollar to our 20 dollars to get to the same capability. We are going to lose if we can’t figure out how to drop the cost and increase the speed in our defense supply chains,” Holt explained.

The United States has “gotten a very centrally and micromanaged system of appropriations that have served the Cold War well,” Holt said. “In this environment today, it is absolutely going to kill us. We cannot have a system where the appropriations — where it’s in statute that the name of the program is on that money, and the phase within the program is on the statute, so it’s illegal for a program executive officer inside of execution year to look at that and say — ‘No, there’s a better way to allocate those resources.’”

The report also pointed to comments made in 2019 by Strategic Command, Gen. John Hyten, who similarly said that the United States had lost the ability to “go fast.”

“We have adversaries now, and we see proof in those adversaries that they’re going faster than we are,” Hyten said. “Slow, expensive, that’s the way it is … I’m criticizing the entire process … the entire process is broken … We have to go faster, and we’re not, and it is frustrating the heck out of me. Look at the threat, if we’re not going faster than the threat than it’s wrong.”