U.S. air bases in the Indo-Pacific region are vulnerable to China’s missile attacks, according to a Washington-based foreign affairs think tank.
The authors designed a model to calculate how long U.S. air bases could be shut down if their runways and taxiways are disabled, factoring in data including estimates of Chinese missile capabilities, U.S. and allies’ missile defense capabilities, and runway repair times.
According to the results, runway attacks targeting Japan could stop fighter jets from taking off for at least 280 hours, or 11.7 days at the beginning of a war.
And China could disrupt U.S. combat operations “for much longer” because tanker jets, which are used to refuel other jets mid-air, would be grounded for more than a month (33.3 days) in the event of runway damage.
Japan is located among what’s known as the first island chain, a chain of Pacific archipelagos in the East China Sea and the South China Sea running from Japan in the north to Indonesia in the south.
For airfields in Guam and the Pacific Islands, a runway attack could ground fighter jets for 1.7 days and tankers for 4 days, according to the report.
“These runway closures could also push back U.S. bombers to bases in Australia, Hawaii, or Alaska at the outset of a conflict, adding hours to the flight times and substantially reducing the number of bomber sorties that the United States could generate each day,” the report said.
Authors suggested that the U.S. military should invest in a large number of cheap drones, long-range precision weapons, and runway repair capabilities to make such potential attacks by communist China less effective.
They also recommended better partnership with allies to ensure that friendly countries are more willing to open their airports for the U.S. military in the event of war with China.
The report noted that the U.S. air force has developed a Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery (RADR) program that aims to quickly reopen runways after an attack and ensure that the runway remains ready for thousands of sorties.
Although the U.S. military’s RADR capability has increased, the report said, it’s still unclear if it will be sufficient “to quickly recover sortie generation in a military conflict.”
The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.
The Department of Defense is spending billions of dollars each year in its Pacific Deterrence Initiative, including millions on upgrading airfields and air bases, to counter threats posed by the Chinese regime in the Indo-Pacific region.
The initiative includes the building of the Guam Defense System, which is an enhanced integrated air and missile defense system that shields Guan from ballistic, hypersonic, and other types of missiles.
Investment in the airfields in Tinian, Guam, Saipan, and Palau in the second island chain and the training of pilots adapted to operations in these airfields are also part of the initiative.
Long-range precision strikes and the use of inexpensive, easily replaceable weapons, such as drones and hypersonic missiles, have been suggested as alternative strategies by various military strategic reports.
