Latest news with #AgileCombatEmployment
Miami Herald
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Pubic highway becomes runway so fighter jets can practice landing
NATO Allies also conducted highway operating exercises in Sweden, showcasing Agile Combat Employment (ACE) tactics that enhance operational flexibility and resilience in contested environments. "ACE is a key capability, which we would employ to defend Europe in any Article 5 confrontation," Air Marshal Johnny Stringer, Deputy Commander of NATO Allied Air Command, emphasised on the importance of ACE in modern warfare. "ACE brings together Air Forces from across the Alliance and has them operate from many different air bases, ensuring the credibility and capabilities that underpin our deterrence posture." An Article 5 confrontation is a situation where an armed attack against one NATO member is treated as an attack against all members, obligating the entire alliance to respond collectively in defense. NATO added: "The Finnish and Swedish exercises in May demonstrate NATO's collective ability to adapt and respond quickly to emerging threats." The post Pubic highway becomes runway so fighter jets can practice landing appeared first on Talker. Copyright Talker News. All Rights Reserved.
Scoop
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Northern Mariana Islands: Residents Weigh The Costs Of A US Military Build-Up On Tinian
, RNZ Pacific Guam Correspondent From the air, Tinian looks like a green patch in the blue Pacific. Just six miles wide and seven miles long, you can drive across it in under an hour. Yet, it is big enough to hold a World War 2-era airbase, atomic bombs that ended the war, and the site of a current US military build-up that includes airfield expansion and training ranges. Tinian resident and local hotel owner Deborah Fleming drove me up to North Field during my 72 hour-visit to the island. It is the site of several runways north of the island built during World War 2 from which two American planes took off to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, it is being refurbished under the US military's Agile Combat Employment (ACE) doctrine, a way to quickly move forces across the Pacific to confuse and enemy and avoid concentrating forces in one place. "It alerts me, something is imminent," Fleming said when she saw more jungle being cleared as we arrived at North Field. "But it's better to be prepared." Fleming was a child when her father and other Tinian residents were debating whether to lease land to the US military for the purpose of building a base. "The promise was that they would build schools, hospitals. My elders' main interest was school," said Fleming. This was part of the agreement made between the US and the founding fathers of Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands' (CNMI) back in 1975. Don Farrell, a Tinian-based military historian, explained that when CNMI's Covenant - the archipelago's governing document - was written, it outlined CNMI's right to control its internal matters while granting the federal government sovereignty over its foreign affairs and defense. As a result, the US government negotiated to lease two-thirds of land on Tinian for 50 years. "The people of Tinian are seeing approximately $1 billion dollars in [Department of Defence] contracts for construction projects here," Farrell said. "We have seen virtually nothing in the way of federal funding to support, help develop the island of Tinian for the people of Tinian. That is causing some friction. But not causing civil disobedience or anything like that." Joint Region Marianas (JRM), which oversees installation management for all Department of Defence (DoD) projects in the region, told KPRG/RNZ Pacific that there are no plans for the DoD to "construct medical facilities or a hospital on Tinian at this time." JRM added that the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Marianas real estate team is "preparing a lease amendment to accommodate the return of about 30 acres of land for a future landfill within the Atgidon military lease area on Tinian." Instead, the Defense Department proposed to create what they called the CNMI Joint Military Training Facility (CJMT) in 2015. It would serve as a training ground for the thousands of troops relocating from Okinawa to Guam's Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz to train. A blueprint of the plan included ripping out a reef to practice amphibious landings, high hazard impact training like shootings and bombings, ship-to-shore launches using howitzers, and live bombing a smaller island just north of Tinian called Pagan Island. Their plans were so outrageous that there was a huge backlash. "The Tinian's Women's Association, Guardians of Gani, Pagan Watch, The Center for Biodiversity, we pulled together and sued regarding the military build up here," Fleming said, who was a spokesperson for one of the four community groups. The case went all the way up to the ninth circuit court. They lost. "I don't believe we lost," Fleming said, adding that a result of this lawsuit led to the scaling down of CJMT. "There's not going to be a multi-spectrum bombing range here. Now, it's going to be a firing range. More small scale." But those airfield runways? Hundreds of acres of jungle are still being cleared. While vegetation removal efforts are underway across North Field, austere landings are already happening. A Divert Airfield near Tinian's airport is expected to finish construction by 2027. It'll provide an alternative landing site for the US Air Force in case Guam's Andersen Air Force base in unavailable or down. According to Tinian's mayor Edwin Aldan the military build-up has brought a "big change" for the island. "The impact on this military build-up has brought the economic base for Tinian Island hundred folds in taxes and job opportunities," said Aldan, who was a former police officer for the island home to just about 2,000 people and has a minimum wage of $7.25. U.S. military contractors are offering more than twice that amount for starting wage ($17.25 to be exact). Aldan said that's a lot of money for locals with little to no work experience. "But I just want to make sure that when [the military] leave, we got something behind to sustain ourselves, which is tourism," Aldan said. Most hotel accommodation on Tinian have been booked for two to three years on end due to military developments. "We're having trouble and problems in trying to make the tourists stay for longer - three, four days - because all of these rooms are taken," he said. The build-up and influx of contractors have also sent housing costs soaring. Prior to 2018, Aldan said a two-bedroom home would cost around $80,000. Now, a one-bedroom can go up to $180,000. "The demand was huge. The supply was limited," Alan Perez said, financial advisor to the mayor. "Prices have gone up considerably." Deborah Fleming is a witness to this. "It's hard on the locals, and even the contractors. There's just no housing," she said. "It's extremely expensive." While some people might see it as a problem, Aldan said the build-up is necessary as it's creating job opportunities for people and helping the economy. Historian Don Farrell agrees, noting that most residents have no say about what happens. "The people of Tinian don't have direct access to decision makers, right? That's all in Saipan through the Commonwealth Bureau of Military Affairs. They talk, but they don't communicate with us either," he said. "So we usually don't know what's happening, as far as the military is concerned, until something happens, and we get some kind of a public information release. So everybody here is essentially in the dark." Farrell emphasised that the build-up is a federal issue. "We are outside of the loop and communications." This does not deter Fleming. "Honest to God, I'd rather be an American than under Chinese or even Russia," she said. "Because there's due process. You have the freedom to speak. You're guaranteed the right to speak. That's important for self-preservation, for the preservation of our community, our culture, our thinking."
RNZ News
30-04-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Northern Mariana Islands: Residents weigh the costs of a US military build-up on Tinian
A view of Camp Tinian's entrance, a military installation primarily used for engineering projects, joint service exercises, and community relations events supported by the US Navy and US Marines. Photo: Naina Rao / KPRG News From the air, Tinian looks like a green patch in the blue Pacific. Just six miles wide and seven miles long, you can drive across it in under an hour. Yet, it is big enough to hold a World War 2-era airbase, atomic bombs that ended the war, and the site of a current US military build-up that includes airfield expansion and training ranges. Tinian resident and local hotel owner Deborah Fleming drove me up to North Field during my 72 hour-visit to the island. It is the site of several runways north of the island built during World War 2 from which two American planes took off to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, it is being refurbished under the US military's Agile Combat Employment (ACE) doctrine, a way to quickly move forces across the Pacific to confuse and enemy and avoid concentrating forces in one place. "It alerts me, something is imminent," Fleming said when she saw more jungle being cleared as we arrived at North Field. "But it's better to be prepared." Fleming was a child when her father and other Tinian residents were debating whether to lease land to the US military for the purpose of building a base. "The promise was that they would build schools, hospitals. My elders' main interest was school," said Fleming. This was part of the agreement made between the US and the founding fathers of Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands' (CNMI) back in 1975. Vegetation is cleared from the runway in Tinian's North Field, a site of historical significance and ongoing U.S. military expansion in the Pacific Photo: Naina Rao / KPRG News Don Farrell, a Tinian-based military historian, explained that when CNMI's Covenant - the archipelago's governing document - was written, it outlined CNMI's right to control its internal matters while granting the federal government sovereignty over its foreign affairs and defense. As a result, the US government negotiated to lease two-thirds of land on Tinian for 50 years. "The people of Tinian are seeing approximately $1 billion dollars in [Department of Defence] contracts for construction projects here," Farrell said. "We have seen virtually nothing in the way of federal funding to support, help develop the island of Tinian for the people of Tinian. That is causing some friction. But not causing civil disobedience or anything like that." Vegetation is cleared from the runway in Tinian's North Field, a site of historical significance and ongoing US military expansion in the Pacific Photo: Naina Rao / KPRG News Joint Region Marianas (JRM), which oversees installation management for all Department of Defence (DoD) projects in the region, told KPRG/RNZ Pacific that there are no plans for the DoD to "construct medical facilities or a hospital on Tinian at this time." JRM added that the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Marianas real estate team is "preparing a lease amendment to accommodate the return of about 30 acres of land for a future landfill within the Atgidon military lease area on Tinian." Instead, the Defense Department proposed to create what they called the CNMI Joint Military Training Facility (CJMT) in 2015. It would serve as a training ground for the thousands of troops relocating from Okinawa to Guam's Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz to train. A blueprint of the plan included ripping out a reef to practice amphibious landings, high hazard impact training like shootings and bombings, ship-to-shore launches using howitzers, and live bombing a smaller island just north of Tinian called Pagan Island. Their plans were so outrageous that there was a huge backlash. "The Tinian's Women's Association, Guardians of Gani, Pagan Watch, The Center for Biodiversity, we pulled together and sued regarding the military build up here," Fleming said, who was a spokesperson for one of the four community groups. The case went all the way up to the ninth circuit court. They lost. "I don't believe we lost," Fleming said, adding that a result of this lawsuit led to the scaling down of CJMT. "There's not going to be a multi-spectrum bombing range here. Now, it's going to be a firing range. More small scale." But those airfield runways? Hundreds of acres of jungle are still being cleared. While vegetation removal efforts are underway across North Field, austere landings are already happening. A Divert Airfield near Tinian's airport is expected to finish construction by 2027. It'll provide an alternative landing site for the US Air Force in case Guam's Andersen Air Force base in unavailable or down. Vegetation is cleared from the runway in Tinian's North Field, a site of historical significance and ongoing U.S. military expansion in the Pacific Photo: Naina Rao / KPRG News According to Tinian's mayor Edwin Aldan the military build-up has brought a "big change" for the island. "The impact on this military build-up has brought the economic base for Tinian Island hundred folds in taxes and job opportunities," said Aldan, who was a former police officer for the island home to just about 2,000 people and has a minimum wage of $7.25. U.S. military contractors are offering more than twice that amount for starting wage ($17.25 to be exact). Aldan said that's a lot of money for locals with little to no work experience. "But I just want to make sure that when [the military] leave, we got something behind to sustain ourselves, which is tourism," Aldan said. Tinian & Aguiguan Mayor Edwin Aldan stands before the US flag and Tinian's Commonwealth seal. The former police officer has been mayor since 2018. Photo: Naina Rao / KPRG News Most hotel accommodation on Tinian have been booked for two to three years on end due to military developments. "We're having trouble and problems in trying to make the tourists stay for longer - three, four days - because all of these rooms are taken," he said. The build-up and influx of contractors have also sent housing costs soaring. Prior to 2018, Aldan said a two-bedroom home would cost around $80,000. Now, a one-bedroom can go up to $180,000. "The demand was huge. The supply was limited," Alan Perez said, financial advisor to the mayor. "Prices have gone up considerably." Deborah Fleming is a witness to this. "It's hard on the locals, and even the contractors. There's just no housing," she said. "It's extremely expensive." While some people might see it as a problem, Aldan said the build-up is necessary as it's creating job opportunities for people and helping the economy. A sign marks the entrance to the US Air Force's adaptive rehabilitation site of North Field. Heavy machinery, including bulldozers, sits parked near the entrance. Photo: Naina Rao / KPRG News Historian Don Farrell agrees, noting that most residents have no say about what happens. "The people of Tinian don't have direct access to decision makers, right? That's all in Saipan through the Commonwealth Bureau of Military Affairs. They talk, but they don't communicate with us either," he said. "So we usually don't know what's happening, as far as the military is concerned, until something happens, and we get some kind of a public information release. So everybody here is essentially in the dark." Farrell emphasised that the build-up is a federal issue. "We are outside of the loop and communications." This does not deter Fleming. "Honest to God, I'd rather be an American than under Chinese or even Russia," she said. "Because there's due process. You have the freedom to speak. You're guaranteed the right to speak. That's important for self-preservation, for the preservation of our community, our culture, our thinking."
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Collaborative Combat Drones Designed From Ground Up To Do Logistics Differently
The U.S. Air Force's new Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones are being developed around fundamentally different understandings of maintenance, logistics, and sustainment, with a heavy focus on commercial-of-the-shelf components, than the service's existing crewed and uncrewed platforms. This is particularly true regarding how CCAs will be supported at forward locations during future conflicts as the drones are the first aircraft designed from the ground up around concepts for distributed and disaggregated operations collectively referred to as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). The Air & Space Forces Association hosted a panel discussion on CCA logistics at its 2025 Warfare Symposium yesterday, at which TWZ was in attendance. Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures, was one of three panelists. The other two were Mike Atwood, Vice President for Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), and Andrew Van Timmeren, Senior Director of Autonomous Airpower at Anduril Industries. In 2024, the Air Force picked GA-ASI and Anduril to design and build CCA prototypes, now designated YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively, as part of the program's first phase or Increment 1. Requirements for a second tranche of CCAs, or Increment 2, which could be more costly, are coalescing now. The service expects to buy between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs, but has said in the past that it could ultimately acquire at least a thousand of the drones across all of the program's increments. It remains unclear whether the Air Force plans to buy just YF-42As or YF-44As, or a mix of both, under Increment 1. 'We need to think about how we survive and generate combat power from the inside, and how do we strengthen our position on the inside? And part of that is distributed basing,' Kunkel said near the start of yesterday's panel discussion by way of introduction. 'The ability to create multiple dilemmas for our adversaries, … multiple places where they have to distribute and make choices about whether they're going to target or not, that's a really big deal for us.' 'That distributed basing also creates a lot of inefficiencies in how you might sustain something,' Kundel continued. 'Some of the design attributes that these two teams have been building into their CCAs are exactly that – you don't want to have a huge additional footprint that's required. You don't want to have, like, the big sustainment requirements.' 'You want to be able to use commercial stuff to the max extent [so] you don't have to take specialized refueling equipment, specialized loading equipment' to forward locations, the Air Force's force design boss added. Specialized maintenance and logistics demands, as well as the need for more bespoke equipment on the ground to support flight operations, have been major hurdles for the Air Force when it comes to implementing the ACE concepts using existing crewed and uncrewed aircraft. GA-ASI's Atwood highlighted lessons learned from the Air Force's Rapid Raptor and Rapid Reaper concepts for quickly deploying small force packages of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and MQ-9 Reaper drones, respectively, along with supporting assets to forward locations. The MQ-9 is another General Atomics product and the company helped in the development of a 'kit' to assist with deploying and sustaining those drones within the ACE construct. This includes using the Reapers themselves to carry their own sustainment kits into a remote locale and to conduct limited resupply missions by carrying small cargoes in travel pods under their wings. 'So our CCA aircraft uses that pedigree' and has 'a footprint today' that is focused on forward-deployed operations and reducing maintenance demands as much as possible, Atwood said yesterday. 'The best aircraft is the one you don't do maintenance on.' He also highlighted 'condition-based maintenance' concepts leveraging systems on the drones to alert maintainers and help them start ahead of larger issues. The CCA 'should tell you when it's starting to cough a little bit and get sick.' General Atomics' CCA design also incorporates other features to ensure it can operate from more far-flung locations with more limited infrastructure, including shorter and less well-maintained runways. Atwood again used prior experience with the MQ-9 to help illustrate these challenges. 'We showed up at these World War II leftover airfields. And we quickly realized these airfields are in really bad shape, really bad shape, and we started to really appreciate runway distance,' Atwood explained. 'It's hard to make a fast-moving aircraft use a lot less runway. And so what we realized is we needed a trailing-arm landing gear.' A trailing-arm helps smooth the impact of landing, which in turn can help reduce wear and tear. This is especially beneficial for CCAs flying from short and potentially rough fields during future operations. When it comes to Anduril's CCA design, also known as Fury, Van Timmeren talked about how features to make it more readily maintainable in the field, as well as low-maintenance overall, were baked in early on. Van Timmeren, a retired Air Force officer who flew F-22s, previously worked for Blue Force Technologies, which started Fury's development in the late 2010s and was then acquired by Anduril in 2023. You can read the full story of how Fury came to be in this past in-depth TWZ feature. 'Early on, you communicate with your engineering team, not just the performance characteristics of the hardware that you want … we also want to say everything has to be easily accessible for the design. Everything has to be easily line replaceable,' Van Timmeren said yesterday. 'We have ease of access for all the panels [on Fury].' Another 'one of the things that's critical to the ease of supportability is leveraging as much as possible commercial components. So engines that are flight-certified, already in mass production for the civilian aviation community. Wheels, tires, brakes, hydraulic actuators, all the sub-components that go into a vehicle,' he added, also noting that no bespoke tools are required to do work on Fury. A 'perfect example of that actually is the engine [on Fury],' Van Timmeren continued. 'We're using a commercial engine that is in production, is FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] certified, millions of flight hours on it.' Fury is powered by a single Williams International FJ44-4M turbofan engine. FJ44 variants are in widespread use, especially on business jets, including members of the popular Cessna Citation family. Van Timmeren also used the example of needing to replace a blown tire to further illustrate the value of using components more readily available on the commercial market. Bespoke tires for military aircraft can be wildly expensive, as TWZ has reported on in the past. They can also be harder to source overall. If you blow a tire, 'you might have to go out in the community to find it,' Van Timmeren said. Using commercial parts available through global logistics networks means you can 'go to local FBO and buy it,' he added, referring to fixed-base operator/fixed-based operations contractors who provide general aviation support services at airports. TWZ has reported in the past about the serious issues the Air Force has already been facing with spare part supply chains, especially when it comes to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. During yesterday's panel discussion, both General Atomics' Atwood and Anduril's Van Timmeren highlighted the benefits that new and improving manufacturing processes, including 3D printing and other additive manufacturing techniques, are also expected to bring to the CCA sustainment pipeline. Supporting CCA operations, especially at more remote and/or austere forward locations, isn't just about the drones themselves. Maj. Gen. Kunkel had already highlighted these issues just recently at a separate talk the Hudson Institute think tank hosted last week. 'I will tell you, some of it's not like the sexy, cool stuff. It's like the basics. It's like bomb loaders, missile loaders, and, you know, refueling trucks and, you know, electric carts and air conditioning carts,' he said at that time. 'They've got to be made differently.' To help in this regard, General Atomics' CCA design features an all-electric start-up capability that requires no off-board support. 'So you can hit a button, the plane will start up, taxi, [and] take off all on its own,' according to Atwood. Any ground support equipment and other assets needed to support CCAs at forward locations also have to be able to get there in the first place with the same level of rapidity. 'I employed the James Bond model. I only want to maintain something that I could jump out of the back of the C-130 with,' Atwood said. 'When you think about the sustainment architectures that we built in the past, the thought was that they were going to be in sanctuary. So, you know, you could afford to build a piece of aircraft ground equipment that weighed 10,000 pounds and wouldn't fit on a C-130,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel had also noted last week at the Hudson Institute talk. Focusing assets that will fit inside a C-130 or a similarly-sized platform may not be enough to support future CCA operations. 'We use MQ-9 to carry parts between bases, and that's something we've done in the past, and something we'll continue to do,' but 'the concept of logistics, what we need for airlift, is going to change potentially,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel said yesterday. 'And you need a cargo aircraft that can very agilely deliver parts, and deliver weapons, and deliver material to places that are inside.' 'I think CCA can actually be, in some cases, a mobility aircraft,' General Atomics Atwood said, highlighting the internal bay on his company's design. 'One of the reasons that GA chose to have an internal weapons bay was for carrying not just missiles and kinetics, but to do that logistics.' All of this is set to have downstream operational and other impacts across the Air Force. 'So many people think about survivability in the air, in air combat phase, but just as important is survivability on the ground,' General Atomics' Atwood said. The ACE concepts of operations, at their core, are heavily centered on making it difficult for an opponent to target friendly forces on the ground. There also an increasingly heated debate about whether the Air Force, in particular, should be doing more to physically harden its existing main operating bases against attack, as you can read more about here. 'So, minimizing your turn time on the aircraft,' helped by using commercial components and supporting assets, 'gets you to have a turnaround time that is extremely difficult for the adversary' to get its targeting cycle around, Atwood added. Atwood further noted that the often discussed need for more 'affordable mass' to provide the required air combat capacity to win future conflicts could be provided with fewer platforms if they're more survivable, including on the ground, and can be employed at a very high tempo. The General Atomics executive also highlighted the value of increasingly autonomous capabilities in further reducing the required footprint on the ground. 'The other part about autonomy is it takes a [control] van out of it. So I need less deployed footprint, less chow halls, less barracks,' Atwood said. 'For a number of ways, simplicity eliminates vulnerabilities,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel also said. 'What it also does, it opens up the aperture on where you can actually place these things.' Kunkel noted that CCAs could operate from allied and partner airbases, and even from commercial airports, in addition to fully U.S.-controlled facilities, during future operations. The Air Force has already been using a mix of test aircraft, crewed and uncrewed, to help lay the ground work for its future CCAs, including just how the drones will be integrated into its force structure and day-to-day training and other activities, as well as combat operations. Yesterday, Kunkel noted that his service has established an Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) dedicated to this work at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The Air Force announced last year that it would be increasing purchases of prototype Increment 1 CCAs to further help in this regard. CCAs are 'going to be the first aircraft that we have developed specifically for ACE,' Kunkel stressed. 'That's going to be the game changer for us.' For the Air Force to truly get the most out of its future CCA fleets, a new logistics and sustainment ecosystem will be required. General Atomics and Anduril have already been baking those demands into their YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A designs. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
USAF Generals Downplay Calls For More Hardened Aircraft Shelters In Pacific Theater
U.S. Air Force officials remain focused on the ability to disperse forces to far-flung operating locations as the primary means of reducing vulnerability to enemy attacks. They also continue to downplay any talk of doing more to physically harden existing bases. This is despite acknowledgments that large established facilities are still expected to play key roles in any future conflict and can no longer be considered sanctuaries. All of this comes amid an increasingly heated debate about whether the entire U.S. military should be investing in new hardened aircraft shelters and other similar infrastructure improvements, which TWZ has been following closely. Air Force Gen. Kevin Schneider, head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), the service's top command in the Indo-Pacific region, spoke yesterday about current 'resilient' basing priorities during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium, at which TWZ was in attendance. The panel's main topic was Agile Combat Employment (ACE), a term that currently refers to a set of concepts for distributed and disaggregated operations centered heavily on short notice and otherwise irregular deployments, often to remote, austere, or otherwise non-traditional locales. The other branches of the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Marine Corps, have been developing similar new concepts of operations. 'So the Air Force wants to populate the Indo-Pacific with dispersed operating locations to support ACE. However, the Air Force also needs to invest heavily in resilient infrastructure at its main operating bases,' Heather 'Lucky' Penney, the panel's moderator, said as a lead in to a question. 'So, General Schneider, could you speak to what the Air Force is doing to balance the demand for resilient infrastructure while also building out ACE operating locations across the Indo-Pacific?' Penney is currently a senior fellow at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and also an Air Force veteran who flew F-16s. 'It's different in the Indo-Pacific than it is in Europe. [We] do not have NATO. You have a couple of – five bilateral treaty partners. Two of them are Korea and Japan where we share basing,' Schneider said in response. 'We also have the joint force demands on our bases. And their are benefits to that, as well. I like having the Army on our bases, especially when they have Patriots [surface-to-air missile systems] and other capability that helps us defend.' It's worth noting here that currently the U.S. Army is the lead service for providing air and missile defense for Air Force bases at home and abroad. There has been talk recently about the Air Force potentially taking a greater role in this regard. The Army has been facing its own struggles in meeting growing demand for ground-based air and missile defenses. 'So, we will have the need for bases, the main operating bases from which we operate,' the PACAF commander continued. 'The challenge becomes, at some point, we will need to move to austere locations. We will need to disaggregate the force. We will need to operate out of other locations, again, one for survivability, and two, again, to provide response options.' Ensuring the continued viability of main operating bases and work related to ACE both 'cost money,' he said. The Air Force is then faced with the need to 'make internal trades' funding-wise, such as 'do we put that dollar towards, you know, fixing the infrastructure at Kadena [Air Base in Japan] or do we put that dollar towards restoring an airfield at Tinian,' according to Schneider. What Gen. Schneider was referring to at the end here is the massive amount of work that has been done to reclaim North Field on the island of Tinian, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, since the end of 2023. North Field was originally built as a huge B-29 bomber base during World War II. It was the biggest active airbase anywhere in the world before being largely abandoned after the war ended. There has also been additional expansion of the available facilities at Tinian International Airport in recent years, ostensibly to improve its ability to serve as a divert location for U.S. military aircraft in the event that the critically strategic Andersen Air Force Base on nearby Guam is rendered unusable for any reason. North Field is a prime example of the Air Force's current focus on ACE as the centerpiece of how it expects to fight in the future, especially in a high-end fight in the Pacific. The airfield's grid-like layout inherently presents additional targeting challenges for a potential adversary like China, as you can read about in more detail in TWZ's recent story on what has been happening over the past year or so on Tinian. Guam has also seen significant military construction work in recent years, including to refurbish more of the World War II-era Northwest Field on the island to support ACE operations. Guam is now set to get a huge new air and missile defense architecture full of new surface-to-air missile launchers, radars, and other supporting facilities, as you can read more about here. 'These are the things that we need in our main operating bases. These are the things that we need to project power,' Gen. Schneider added, but did not explicitly mention hardened infrastructure. He also emphasized a desire to work more with regional allies and partners to 'gain greater access to those fields that are already in operating condition.' Air Force Gen. James Hecker, another member of yesterday's ACE panel at the AFA Warfare Symposium, also stressed the continued importance of existing main operating bases. Hecker, who is head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA), as well as NATO's Allied Air Command, highlighted significant challenges his service faces in successfully executing large-scale dispersed operations in the future, as well. 'I have the opportunity to talk to the Ukrainian air chief once every two weeks, or so. And they've been very successful not getting their aircraft hit on the ground,' Hecker said. 'And I ask him, I said, 'How is that? What do you do?' And he goes, 'Well, we never take off and land at the same airfield. I'm like, okay, you know, that's pretty good. Keeps the Russians on their toes.' 'I got tons of airfields from tons of allies, and we have access to all of them. The problem is, I can only protect a few of them,' he continued. 'We can't have that layered [defensive] effect for thousands of airbases. There's just no way it's going to happen.' However, Gen. Hecker warned that just dispersing forces to more bases will not be a solution in of itself, either. 'So, to go think you're going to land at another airfield and hang out there for a week with no defense, you're going to get schwacked. It's going to happen,' he said. 'You can only stay there for a little bit, and then you've got to get back to your main operating bases.' 'It's going to be much shorter operations. You know, we're not talking weeks anymore,' Hecker explained. 'We're talking days, and sometimes we're talking hours, if you want to be survivable. And then back at your main operating base, you've got the layered defense.' Hecker called attention to how shrinking adversary kill chains are a key driving factor here, specifically highlighting Russia's efforts to reduce the total time it takes to complete a targeting cycle in operations in Ukraine. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been doing the same, particularly with the help of a growing array of space-based surveillance assets. The time it takes from certain munitions like ballistic and hypersonic missiles to actually get to their targets after launch can also be very short. 'So it's really evolving the ACE concept,' the Air Force's top officer in Europe noted. Realities like the ones Hecker outlined are exactly what has been driving increasing criticism of the Air Force's current focus on ACE, as well as the service's general approach to basing and base defense, including from members of Congress and outside experts. Just in January, the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., published a report warning that a lack of hardened and unhardened aircraft shelters, as well as other exposed infrastructure, at bases across the Pacific and elsewhere globally has left the U.S. military worryingly vulnerable. The report's authors assessed that just 10 missiles with warheads capable of scattering cluster munitions across areas 450 feet in diameter could be sufficient to neutralize all aircraft parked in the open and critical fuel storage facilities at key airbases like Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Another report that the Henry L. Stimson Center think tank published last December highlighted how Chinese missile strikes aimed just at cratering runways at bases in the Pacific could upend the U.S. military's ability to project airpower. 'While 'active defenses' such as air and missile defense systems are an important part of base and force protection, their high cost and limited numbers mean the U.S. will not be able to deploy enough of them to fully protect our bases,' a group of 13 Republican members of Congress wrote in an open letter to the Air Force back in May 2024. 'In order to complement active defenses and strengthen our bases, we must invest in 'passive defenses,' like hardened aircraft shelters… Robust passive defenses can help minimize the damage of missile attacks by increasing our forces' ability to withstand strikes, recover quickly, and effectively continue operations.' 'While hardened aircraft shelters do not provide complete protection from missile attacks, they do offer significantly more protection against submunitions than expedient shelters (relocatable steel shelters),' the letter's authors added. More shelters 'would also force China to use more force to destroy each aircraft, thereby increasing the resources required to attack our forces and, in turn, the survivability of our valuable air assets.' Outside of the United States, especially in China, but also in Russia, North Korea, and many other countries, there has been a growing trend in the expansion of hardened and otherwise more robust airbase infrastructure. Air Force officials have also pushed back more actively on the idea of investing in additional physical hardening in recent years. 'I'm not a big fan of hardening infrastructure,' Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said at a roundtable at the Air and Space Forces Association's main annual symposium in 2023. 'The reason is because of the advent of precision-guided weapons… you saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters. They're not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.' Wilsbach was commander of PACAF at the time and has since become head of Air Combat Command (ACC), which oversees the vast majority of the Air Force's tactical combat jets and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft. The comments yesterday from the Air Force's current top officers in the Indo-Pacific region and Europe highlighting the continued focus on ACE and the challenges with that strategy are only likely to further fuel the ongoing debate about building more hardened infrastructure to help ensure American forces can continue to project air power in future fights. Contact the author: joe@
