Beijing eyed these mega bases and
devised a simple strategy for
suppressing us airpower in the region. Build a couple of thousand non-nuclear
ballistic missiles and in wartime. Lob
them at the bases until their runways, aprons, hangars, fuel tanks and warehouses
are nothing but craters.
After years of buildup the chinese
rocket force possesses around 1 300
ground-launched missiles with sufficient
range to hit Cadenna and Anderson from Mainland China. The air force won't say exactly which
bases are part of its plan but it's
possible to make educated guesses. American territories and small island
countries offer the most dependable
facilities, arguably the most important
bases in the philippines are accessible
only at the whim of that country's
mercurial president.
The emerging map of the usaf's expanding
base network also reveals where the
service has potential airfield gaps, most
glaringly in the philippine sea east of Taiwan. In that gap the U.S Navy's pacific fleet
might lend its sister service a helping
hand and deploy some of its 10 aircraft
carriers and big deck assault ships.
The air force maintains a master list of
what general Kenneth Wilsbach the head
of pacific air forces described as every
single piece of concrete in the pacific
region.
We have a plan for all of those
airfields and some of them meet the
criteria and they are therefore part of
what we call clusters wilsbach told air
force magazine last year. some of the bases are main hubs in the
network, others are spokes.
Aircraft, fuel, weapons and supplies not
to mention people would move through the
hubs to the smaller spoke bases. The more often people and stuff move the
safer they're from chinese rockets, that's the theory.
An alphabet soup of concepts underpins
the new base network the practice of
breaking up 20 plane fighter squadrons
and dispersing small detachments of jets
to outlying bases is called agile combat
employment or ace. Bomber squadrons are practicing their
own dispersal as part of the new bomber
task force operation or BTF.
The air force plans to reinforce the
most austere airfields with pre-packed
sets of equipment under the so-called
deployable airbase system or
dabs. To move munitions along the base
network, the flying branch has developed
a procedure it calls tactical ferry or tac ferry, whereby a fighter such as an F-15E load up with more bombs than it
could ever use in combat and delivers
them to whichever small airfield it's
going to be flying from, in essence saving the weapons for later.
Palau Micronesia and the Marianas all
small island countries in the
mid-pacific are keen to host american
forces, that adds at least another half-dozen
airstrips to the USAF's list. The air force already periodically
stages bombers at darwin in australia
add that to the list 2.
Less certain are the airstrips that lie
closest to China and the likeliest war
zone Taiwan. They're all in the Philippines, clark air
base and thidu island are two good
examples. Before the election of volatile
strongman Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 the
usaf probably could count on philippine
bases during a clash with china.
But Duterte has courted china and
criticized the united states. His
administration isn't a dependable u.s
ally when detert leaves office in 2022
u.s philippine relations could change
and the ace-based network could grow.
Tags
Military