But a top U.S. military commander for Asia says time is running out to put the plan in place.

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China’s likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning, Paparo said. Xi doesn’t want to repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mistake in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia’s initial full-scale invasion failed and devolved into a long war of attrition.

The key to thwarting Xi’s assumed strategy is a U.S. strategy called “Hellscape,” Paparo told me. The idea is that as soon as China’s invasion fleet begins moving across the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan, the U.S. military would deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to flood the area and give Taiwanese, U.S. and partner forces time to mount a full response.

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“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

“I can’t tell you what’s in it,” he replied when pressed about details. “But it’s real and it’s deliverable.”

There are some public signs the Hellscape plan is making progress. In March, the Defense Department announced it would spend $1 billion on a program called “Replicator” to build swarms of unmanned surface ships and aerial drones for this very mission. Paparo said the Replicator program shows that the United States is also learning lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, where Ukraine has innovated with drone technology.

The timeline for delivery of these systems is unclear. If the drone swarms aren’t ready when the attack comes, that could raise the prospects of a protracted conflict that would incur heavy losses for U.S. Naval and Air Force assets and would likely expand to include allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, according to most war game exercises conducted at U.S. think tanks.

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Even if “Hellscape” comes together in time, drone swarms alone will not match Beijing’s massive military buildup on its side of the Strait. The PLA is expanding its nuclear, naval, air force, cyber, intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities at record speeds. According to Paparo, China’s military budget is likely three times what Beijing publicly claims, which would put it at about $700 billion annually. Meanwhile, Indo-Pacific Command’s budget is short $11 billion of what it needs this year alone, according to a letter sent to Congress in March by Paparo’s predecessor.

Financing the defense plan is not the only problem. The U.S. military currently has no reliable way to stop China’s hypersonic “carrier killer” cruise missiles. U.S. space assets are also vulnerable to Chinese........

© Washington Post