Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
By Gerry Doyle
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Chinese airfield strikes will ground U.S. military aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region if a conflict breaks out, a new study says, recommending that the United States invest in low-cost unmanned aircraft and runway repair capabilities.
The central problem, the researchers say, is that bases within the first chain of islands — a cluster of archipelagos stretching roughly from Indonesia in an arc northeast to Japan, spanning the South China Sea and the East China Sea — are within range of thousands of Chinese missiles.
If the weapon was intended to destroy or disable runways, it could shut down Japan’s airports for at least 11.7 days. Those farther away, in Guam and the Pacific Islands, could be closed for at least 1.7 days.
“In practice, however, China could hinder U.S. combat operations for much longer by denying the United States use of runways to conduct aerial refueling operations,” the report said.
The report, “Crater Effects: Chinese Missile Threats to US Air Bases in the Indo-Pacific,” was released Thursday by the Stimson Center, a defense and security think tank.
It recommends investing in large numbers of low-cost drones and electronic warfare to complicate Chinese strike planning; development of multi-crew aircraft capable of operating with short runways; developing more runway repair capabilities and base resilience; and fostering alliances so that friendly countries are more willing to open airports for US use.
The US Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees US forces in the region, did not respond to a request for comment.
China’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
US military planners in recent years have built around the concept of distributed operations – spreading forces across the region. As part of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on modernizing airports in places like Australia and Tinian Island.
In recent years, the Air Force also developed a program called Rapid Airfield Damage Recovery (RADR), the report noted, which aimed to quickly reopen runways after an attack and keep them operational for “thousands” of flights.
The U.S. is also counting on missile defense — it plans a multibillion-dollar “layered” network of interceptors to protect Guam — to keep airports and other bases functioning.
A former US Air Force logistics officer with direct knowledge of Indo-Pacific conflict simulations said the report offered a good assessment of the problem.
The officer said RADR and anti-missile defenses would be more effective than the report estimated, and noted that Chinese attack planners would likely use a mixture of munitions, not 100% anti-aircraft submunitions, as the report assumed.
“While I don’t think I agree much with the exact numbers… I agree that the analysis is mostly accurate,” said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The report calculated the effect of Chinese strikes by creating a statistical modeling script in Python that takes into account variables such as runway size, the accuracy of Chinese weapons and US defenses.
“Over the past year, I’ve begun to hear more and more policymakers and analysts suggesting that it would be feasible 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,” said Kelly Grieco, one of the authors of the report. “At least in open source, no one has tested these proposals.”
