An army might still march on its stomach, but today’s U.S. military cannot fight China without an umbrella.

That truth bears urgent reemphasis. China’s People’s Liberation Army possesses an arsenal of thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles. Each year, even more missiles are added to this already highly formidable inventory. Many of these missiles have truly vast ranges and highly redundant targeting capabilities (the United States will not be able to blind them from hitting their targets). And in any war with the U.S. over Taiwan, the PLA would use its missiles in saturation strikes on U.S. military bases on Guam, the Philippines, and Okinawa, and U.S. Navy warships in the Pacific Ocean.

To blunt that onslaught, the U.S. military needs air defense munitions that can bring down PLA missiles after they are launched. Some top Pentagon officials are uncomfortably aware of this looming crisis. Now, it’s time for the White House and Congress to wake up to the problem.

After all, recent conflicts in the Middle East have seen the U.S. military expend large numbers of the most valuable and highly finite air defense munitions. The U.S. conflict with the Houthi rebels in Yemen had, as of January, seen the Navy fire 120 SM-2 missiles, 80 SM-6 missiles, and a variety of 20 ESSM/SM-3 missiles. But that was just in January. Dozens more of these munitions were........

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