US Army Prepares for Possible Global Land Conflict with China The classic assumptions surrounding a possible war between the United States and China focus on regional naval battles in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, but U.S. Army Major General Richard Coffman recently stated that Americans must be and are already preparing for a worldwide ground conflict with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The development of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) under his leadership is one technology and piece of equipment being prepared for such a conflict. Chinese General Xu Qiliang, vice chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission and second-in-command besides Xi Jinping, called for increased military spending in early March, in part because he judged that a military conflict between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States was inevitable. It was the first time such a statement was made publicly at the highest level of the PLA.