I also tasked the armed services to make the PLA the pacing threat—the military force against which we needed to organize, man, train, and equip U.S. forces to fight and defeat—in our professional schools, programs, and training, including the Army’s National Training Center and exercises such as the Air Force’s Red Flag. Identifying the PRC as the pacing threat was the right choice given the effort and resources Beijing was putting into modernizing their military and their war-fighting capabilities, and the fact that they saw us as their pacing threat.
