The document is 221 pages long, dated April 6, and was never supposed to be public. It’s an annual assessment required by Congress — but never released by the Pentagon or the command itself — until The Washington Times obtained a copy and published what’s inside.
The man who wrote it commands roughly 375,000 American troops across a region stretching from the U.S. West Coast to India.
Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in direct terms: China’s military is on track to be ready for war against Taiwan by 2027. The U.S. is not prepared to stop it. And the minimum price tag for getting ready is $122 billion.
That number isn’t a wish list. Paparo called it the minimum needed.
“The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is becoming more dangerous and defined by an increasing risk of confrontation and crisis,” Paparo wrote. “China’s aggressive military modernization, territorial expansion and deepening relationships with Russia and North Korea present key challenges in an increasingly complex security environment.”
The biggest line item in his request: $67.4 billion for missiles. Not just defensive ones. Paparo wants Tomahawks, cruise missiles, hypersonic systems, and Navy SM-3 and SM-6 missiles that can be fired in both offensive and defensive modes. He’s also asking for $18 billion to jam and counter China’s command and control systems, $15 billion for a space-based missile warning network, and $2.3 billion for drone weapons across maritime, underwater and ground domains.
One item in the report stands out: a program called “Blackbeard.” The report describes it as “an affordable, long-range, hypersonic strike missile designed to deliver 80% of advanced hypersonic capability at a fraction of the cost.” Washington has struggled for years to match China’s hypersonic development. Blackbeard, if it performs as described, would change that math quickly.
Then there’s Guam. The Pentagon is spending $4.5 billion on Pacific homeland defense, including a $909 million Guam Defense System capable of stopping Chinese ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles. China knows this. Its DF-26 intermediate-range missile, which the Defense Intelligence Agency flagged in October 2024 as an expanding force, has been openly called the “Guam Killer” in Chinese state media.
The difference now: Paparo’s report reveals that Guam isn’t just being hardened for defense. The island is being prepared for offensive operations. The Army’s Typhon mid-range launcher can fire Tomahawks with a 1,200-mile range from Guam straight toward targets in China. The Army’s Dark Eagle hypersonic weapon, with a range up to 1,700 miles, can do the same. Both systems, from Guam, can reach the Chinese mainland. That detail appeared in an unclassified document nobody was supposed to see.
This assessment doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s the latest in a series of annual Pacific Deterrence Initiative reports that Congress mandated in the fiscal 2021 defense bill. Not one of them has ever been released publicly. They’re legally required, but the command sends them up the chain and the American public hears nothing.
Paparo called the Pentagon’s $1.45 trillion budget request a “monumental paradigm shift in resourcing.” The $122 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative sits inside that request — but also inside a Congress still arguing over spending caps, with the Senate’s defense bill nowhere close to final.
For years, warnings like this got buried in classified channels or executive summaries nobody read. Getting the document out into the open is, on its own, significant. Americans can now read what the man actually in charge of the Pacific theater thinks about China, not the diplomatic version, not the press release version.
