Written by Jerry Doyle
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Chinese strikes on airports would hamper U.S. military aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region if there was a conflict, a new study says, recommending that the United States invest in cheap, unmanned aircraft and runway repair capabilities.
The main problem, researchers say, is that bases within the First Island Chain — a group of archipelagos extending roughly from Indonesia into Japan's northeastern arc, including the South China Sea and East China Sea — are within range of thousands of Chinese missiles. .
If these weapons were intended to destroy or disable runways, they could close down airports in Japan for at least 11.7 days. Remote locations, such as Guam and the Pacific Islands, could be closed for a period of at least 1.7 days.
“But in practical terms, China could disrupt U.S. combat operations for a longer period by denying the United States the use of runways to conduct aerial refueling operations,” the report said.
The report, titled “Pocket Impacts: Chinese Missile Threats to US Air Bases in the Indo-Pacific,” was published Thursday by the Stimson Center, a defense and security think tank.
It recommends investing in a large number of cheap, unmanned aircraft and electronic warfare to complicate Chinese strike planning; Develop more manned aircraft that can operate on short runways; Developing more runway repair capabilities and base resilience capabilities; and foster alliances so that friendly countries become more willing to open airports for U.S. use.
The US Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees US forces in the region, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, US military planners have focused on the concept of distributed operations, that is, spreading forces across a region. As part of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent developing airfields in places such as Australia and Tinian Island.
In recent years, the Air Force has also developed a program called Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery (RADR), the report noted, which aims to quickly reopen runways after an attack and keep them active for “thousands” of sorties.
The United States also relies on missile defenses — it plans a multi-billion-dollar network of interceptors to protect Guam — and to keep airports and other bases operational.
A former US Air Force logistics officer with first-hand knowledge of simulated conflict in the Indo-Pacific said the report provides a good assessment of the problem.
The officer said RADR and missile defenses would be more effective than the report predicted, and noted that Chinese strike planners would likely use a mix of munitions rather than 100% anti-runway submunitions, as the report assumed.
“Although I don't think I agree very much with the exact numbers, I do agree that the analysis is generally correct,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The report calculated the impact of Chinese strikes by creating a statistical modeling script in Python, which took into account variables such as the size of the runway and the accuracy of Chinese weapons and American defenses.
“In the past year, I have begun to hear more and more from policymakers and analysts suggesting that it would be possible for the United States to sink enough Chinese ships and defend Taiwan as long as the United States has access to bases in Japan and Guam.” “At least in open source, no one has tested these proposals,” said Kelly Greco, one of the report's authors.
