Soldiers from US Army Stryker company take part in joint training with military personnel and vehicles of Bulgaria's Armed Forces at Novo Selo grounds, in Bulgaria, April 21, 2022 (Reuters)

The past year of hostilities in the Ukraine conflict has revealed major structural weaknesses in the capability of the United States to fight and sustain armaments, industrial support, and logistics for any extended war against a near-peer adversary, Marine Corps Combatant Development Command Chief Brigadier General Mark Clingan told a Washington conference.

"Some key weaknesses [were] identified in the military industrial complex," Clingan told a conference at the Atlantic Council on Monday.

The general revealed that Chinese shipbuilding capacity is vastly larger than that of the United States.

On Wednesday, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley considered that China is currently on a course to becoming "militarily superior" to the United States with an unstoppable nuclear program and missiles that could reach the US mainland.

Addressing the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on the 2024 budget of the Department of Defense, the top US General claimed that China aims to become a "global coequal" to the United States and surpass the US army's capabilities by 2049.

On Monday, Clingan also stressed that the US Armed Forces needed to invest far more heavily in building a new advanced 21st-century technology infrastructure focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and proliferating vast numbers of cheap, easily manufactured unmanned aerial vehicles or drones.

On his part, Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) Distinguished Research Fellow Thomas Hammes considered that it would be a mistake to try and rebuild and recreate the kind of massive broad industrial base that the United States enjoyed in the decades after World War II.

Instead, weapons designs and replacements should be streamlined so that far fewer parts should be needed for replacement and maintenance in conflict situations, Hammes pointed out.

A couple of days ago, US Cyber Command chief Gen. Paul Nakasone stressed at a US House Armed Services Committee hearing that the United States should have an advantage over Russia and China in terms of machine learning (ML), AI, and other major cyber capabilities.

Nakasone underlined that the US has to keep improving its capabilities in this area, warning of China and Russia's alleged efforts to make cyber attacks more advanced.